The Bank of China (BOC) has worked since 2004 to help domestic firms in contract projects and labor services expand their business overseas.

The BOC's total letter of guarantee to Chinese companies reached 6.485 billion US dollars last year, up 73.81 percent over 2003.

As many Chinese construction companies plan to expand their overseas presence after the country's access to the World Trade Organization, the BOC launched a specialized guarantee service for the companies and provided guarantees of 663 million US dollars in the aggregate to 58 Chinese firms last year.

To meet the rising demand for bank guarantee services, the bank also sped up its hardware construction, including upgrading system servers to minimize processing time and inventing a more powerful search engine.