BOC Registers 58.3 Percent Up in Pre-tax ProfitBank of China (BOC) Group registered the pre-tax profits of 4.8 billion HK dollars (615 million US dollars) in its commercial banking business in the first half of 2000, a growth of 58.3 percent compared with the same period of last year.Net interest income rose by 560 million HK dollars (71.8 million US dollars), representing an increase of 7.3 percent over the same period of 1999, said Liu Jinbao, chief executive of the BOC Hong Kong-Macao Regional Office, when he announced the group's 2000 Interim Results here Wednesday. He attributed the increase mainly to the strengthening of both the asset and liability management, as well as fund management. Thanks to the buoyant stock market, the BOC group also got an increase of 121 percent in brokerage income over the same period of last year, he said. By the end of June, total deposits stood at 658.5 billion HK dollars (84.4 billion US dollars), a rise of 4.5 percent over June, 1999 and a growth of 2.9 percent compared with the end of last year. Loans and advances of the group totaled 355.5 billion HK dollars (45.6 billion US dollars), basically the same as those of the corresponding period of 1999, but a slight growth of 0.6 percent from the end of last year. The loan to deposit ratio was 54 percent at end-June, a reduction of 1.2 percentage points compared with the end of 1999, Liu said, adding that this was due mainly to the group's higher deposits growth rate than that of loans, in addition to the constraints of the still sluggish credit market. As the Chinese enterprise debt problem was still being addressed to, it continued to pose substantial effect on the group's non-performing loans, he said. As at the end of June, the non-performing loans stood at 54.2 billion HK dollars (6.9 billion US dollars), a decrease of 3.3 billion HK dollars (423 million US dollars) or 5.8 percent from the end of last year. |
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