China Construction Bank has said its personal banking business was showing "continuous and healthy"growth.

The CCB, one of the "Big Four" banks in the country, said individual deposits newly added 98.4 billion yuan (11.9 billion USdollars) in the first two months of the year, representing more than half of the bank's targeted amount for the whole 2004.

Individuals deposits in foreign currency in the first two months increased by 174 million US dollars.

By the end of February, outstanding loans for personal spending were 1.73 billion yuan (208.4 million dollars) more than that of last year-end.

Bank executives revealed that CCB, however, would set stricter controls on such consumption-driving loans, as well as money loaned to auto businesses, amid efforts to guard against the accumulation of new non-performing assets.

CCB said that "Dragon Card" holders spent in January and February a combined 10 billion yuan (1.2 billion dollars) on goods purchases, double the figure for the same 2003 period.

And Construction Bank has attracted a pool of regular buyers ofvarious kinds of funds distributed by the bank, executives said.

CCB is widely anticipated to be attractive to private investors after the central government injected 22.5 billion US dollars intoit to help replenish its capital, and also on the back of its lowest bad debt ratio among the "Big Four".

Source: Xinhua