The People's Bank of China (PBOC), China's central bank, is soliciting public opinions on building a nationwide database for personal credit information.

According to a draft regulation on the management of the database for personal credit information, issued by the PBOC Wednesday, a database linking seven cities such as Beijing and southwest China's Chongqing has been on trial run since last year.

A national database is expected to be built at the end of this year. The database collects personal information including identity, profession and address, history of financial credit and other relevant data capable of showing a citizen's credit, according to the PBOC.

The seven-chapter regulation includes items on how banks will report and search personal credit information, how citizens will apply to the administration for correcting their information in the database and how the database will safeguard privacy and security of the information.

Banks will be banned from access to the database and fined 10,000 to 30,000 yuan (1,209 to 3,627 US dollars) if they are over the line or use the information for other purposes than loaning management, the draft regulation said.

The central bank is also trying to set up a blacklist for individuals with poor credit. A person will be blacklisted by all banks linking to the database if he has bad record in one of them, for instance, delaying the payment of loans, Wednesday's China Youth Daily quoted Han Ping, director of PBOC's Business Administration Department, as saying.

Source: Xinhua