The China Construction Bank (CCB) will show hefty growth in individual housing loans this year, to help stimulate economic growth, said senior officials with the bank.

"CCB is to follow a more proactive fiscal policy in the new year by providing more financial support to individual housing loans applicants," said Li Qingzhen, general manager of CCB's Housing and Construction Loan Department.

Li said CCB is scheduled to provide a total of 50 billion yuan (US$6.04 billion) loans in 2000 to assist those individuals. "However, the amount is likely to be greatly increased if there is a greater demand," said Li.

Individual housing consumption in China's major cities has already begun to boom in recent years, with the gradual abolishment of welfare housing. Besides, the government considers it crucial to economic growth to fuel private home ownership.

In Shanghai, the CCB branch delivered 10.2 billion yuan ($1.23 billion) in such loans last year, making it the first provincial branch delivering over 10 billion yuan in individual housing loans in one year.

Until now, the branch has provided 27 billion yuan (US$ 3.26 billion) in loans to individual housing buyers, assisting with the buys of 291,000 houses in Shanghai.

And the bank has taken over 70 per cent of the city's market share in terms of housing loan consumption, said Ning Liming, president of the branch.

She said the branch is set to further expand individual consumption loans backed by its highly efficient services and proficient networks.

Facing fierce competition after China joins the World Trade Organization, domestic financial institutions must beef up efforts to improve their services and development of new products, said Ning.

She said loan application procedures are also likely to be further simplified to grant citizens more easy access.

However, Li urged establishment of an efficient individual credit evaluation system to simplify the application procedure and root out financial risks.

Cui Guosheng, director-general of the Shanghai Provident Fund Management Centre, said the centre is likely to increase its distribution of public housing funds from 7.3 billion yuan (US$0.88 billion) last year to 10 billion yuan (US$ 1.2 billion) this year.

The Shanghai Statistics Bureau said individual housing consumption has already taken 91.1 per cent of the total housing consumption market in 1999, compared with 73.8 per cent in 1998.

"As the former welfare housing policies are finally abolished, this percentage will see a further increase," said Cui. (China Daily)