China Reaches Financial Control TargetsChina's central bank governor said Monday, January 15, that China has successfully realized its macro financial control targets in 2000.Dai Xianglong, governor of the People's Bank of China (PBOC), analyzed China's financial conditions when addressing the PBOC's annual working conference being held in Beijing. According to Dai, by the end of 2000, the outstanding broad money (M2) was 13.46 trillion yuan, up 1.51 trillion yuan or 12.3 percent from the beginning of the year; the outstanding narrow money (M1) stood at 5.3 trillion yuan, up 0.74 trillion yuan or 16 percent; while the outstanding money in circulation (M0) was 1.47 trillion yuan, up 0.12 trillion yuan or nine percent. "All these figures are controlled within the scheduled targets," he said. He said that the central bank has actively guided the input of loans to support national economic development. By the end of the year, the country's total deposits in Renminbi and foreign exchange was equivalent to 13.44 trillion yuan, up 1.75 trillion yuan or 14.6 percent from the previous year; while total loans was equivalent to 10.44 trillion yuan, up 1.29 trillion yuan or 12.1 percent. Of all the loans, 48 percent went to non-State-owned sectors, up two percentage points from the previous year. The interest rate cuts during the year helped reduce the interest expenditure of State-owned enterprises, he said. In 2000,569 State-owned enterprises converted 395.1 billion yuan of debt into equities, lowering their average asset-liability rate from over 70 percent to lower than 50 percent. From 1998 to 2000, wholly State-owned commercial banks wrote off non-performing loans of 117.6 billion yuan to support the reform of State-owned enterprises and the closure of exhausted mines, he added. He pointed out that the opening of China's financial sector to the outside world continued last year. By the end of the year, there were 177 overseas banks in China, with total assets of US$34.6 billion. Of the total assets figure, US$18.8 billion was made up of loans in foreign exchange, accounting for 22.7 percent of the country's total foreign exchange loans. Meanwhile, Chinese banks have opened 68 business institutions overseas, with total assets of US$156.5 billion. Financial services is a significant function of the central bank, Dai said. To promote the advancement of electronics in the financial sector, the PBOC established a national banking card information exchange center and a financial security certification center, realizing inter-bank banking card information exchange in other cities. In addition, the PBOC established a credit registration system connecting its 300 branches. Dai said that this year the central bank will focus its efforts in carrying out the essence of the central economic working conference and on financial supervision. |
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