The Mortgage Corporation in Hong Kong achieved a record after-tax profit totaling 664 million HK dollars (85.13 million US dollars) last year, up 75.2 percent over 2003, an annual report published Monday said.

Chairman of the Board of Directors, also the Financial Secretary Henry Tang, said the results set a new record for the corporation's financial performance which was achieved without sacrificing asset quality.

"The corporation has taken advantage of the improving economic environment to further its mission to develop Hong Kong's debt and capital markets and enhance its role as a pivotal intermediary for channeling funds from the capital markets through the banks to homebuyers," he said.

The return on shareholder equity rose sharply from 11.5 percent to 17.1 percent and the cost-to-income ratio fell from 17.4 percent in 2003 to 12.2 percent in 2004.

Its capital-to-assets ratio also improved from 7.7 percent to 9.4 percent, well above the minimum requirement of 5 percent. Shareholder equity grew to 4.2 billion HK dollars, which represented a doubling of the paid-up capital of 2 billion HK dollars over the past seven years.

In 2004, the corporation purchased 11.4 billion HK dollars of mortgage loans, and provided insurance coverage for newly originated mortgage loans totaling 14.2 billion HK dollars, an increase of 89.3 percent over 2003.

It issued 11.4 billion HK dollars in debt securities and 2.4 billion HK dollars in mortgage-backed securities, maintaining its position as the most active corporate issuer in the Hong Kong dollar debt market.

The corporation also maintained excellent asset quality, with a 90-day delinquency ratio of 0.11 percent for the mortgage insurance portfolio and 0.36 percent for the retained mortgage portfolio as compared with the banking industry average of 0.38 percent.

It also maintained its long-term credit ratings at A1/A+ for foreign currency and Aa3/AA- for local currency debt securities from Moody's Investor Services and Standard & Pool's, which are the same levels as those of the government.