China's largest bank achieves US$5 billion in profit in first six months: spokesman

The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, one of the four largest state-owned banks, achieved 41.6 billion yuan in profits in the first six months of 2005, 2.8 billion yuan more than the same time last year, a spokesman with the bank said here on Wednesday.

Wang Zhenjun, the spokesman, also said the bank's savings, including both Chinese and foreign currencies, reached 5.39 trillion yuan by the end of June, 342.7 billion yuan more than that early this year.

Meanwhile, he said, the bank dealt with 77 billion yuan of non-performing assets during the January-June period.

The achievement was scored while the bank is conducting share-holding system reforms, the spokesman said.

He also noted that the bank will not lay-off employees on a large scale in the near future because of the share-holding system reform. Instead, it will introduce a mechanism to encourage competition.

At present, the bank has 370,000 employees. (1 US dollar = 8.28 yuan)

Source: Xinhua