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Postal savings system to become a bank
(Shenzhen Daily/Agencies)
Updated: 2005-01-24 15:37
China planned to restructure the Postal Savings and Remittance Bureau, the
arm of the national post office that services customer deposits, into a
commercial bank, China's top banking regulator said.
The aim was to push ahead with transforming the bureau this year, said Liu
Mingkang, chairman of the China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC).
The Postal Savings and Remittance Bureau is part of the State Postal Bureau,
also called China Post. It has nearly 31,500 branches and 250-million
depositors.
However, an official of the Postal Savings and Remittance Bureau said Friday
that China's State Council as well as the central bank and National Development
and Reform Commission were now focused on the issue.
"I can tell that they are really beating the gongs and drums on this," Liu
said, quoting an old Chinese saying. "Reform of the postal savings is already
under way. In the future it will become a postal savings bank."
CBRC's Liu said reform of the postal savings system must be "firmly grasped"
this year, but gave no details.
There has been heated discussion in recent years on how to reform the postal
savings system, which currently holds slightly over 1,000 billion yuan (US$121
billion) in deposits, accounting for more than 9 percent of total deposits.
If the system is successfully turned into a bank, it will be China's
fifth-largest after the Industrial and the Commercial Bank of China, the Bank of
China, the China Construction Bank and Agricultural Bank of
China.
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