Banking watchdog sets 5-Year window for foreigners

(South China Morning Post)
Updated: 2006-11-27 15:50

Citigroup and Pudong Development Bank did so in 2004, as did HSBC and Bank of Communications. Royal Bank of Scotland plans to set up a credit card operation with partner Bank of China.

"We will implement the same regulations for domestic banks, the subsidiaries of foreign banks and Sino-foreign joint ventures in the future," Mr Huang said.

The same loan and deposit interest rates will apply to domestic and foreign banks. China will not impose a bad-loan ratio on foreign banks.

Domestic banks must keep to the "two decreases" policy - lowering their bad loan ratios and loans outstanding.

Mr Huang said the CBRC is combining more than 80,000 separate government banking edicts into a single comprehensive code, a first for any government agency.

The code, expected to be published in June next year, will be updated once a year. Foreign banks must obey more than 18 sets of regulations.

From next year, the CBRC plans to strengthen its auditing of banking irregularities. Corrupt or unqualified presidents of branches and subsidiaries are to be removed.

The CBRC plans to set up an information monitoring system on domestic and foreign banks to pick up all irregularities.

"It may take time for us to link to the systems of each bank but the work will be done finally," Mr Huang said.


 12

(For more biz stories, please visit Industry Updates)



Related Stories