OREANDA-NEWS. February 04, 2014. Mr. Hu Huaibang, chairman and Communist Party chief of the China Development Bank (CDB), recently said at CDB 2014 annual work conference that with a theme of "reform" and a focus on supporting national reforms, deepening the bank's own reform and pushing through internal reform, CDB will firmly back investments in areas of national priorities, including new-style urbanization and infrastructure development, social housing projects, industrial restructuring and international cooperation.

Meanwhile, it will also continuously improve management structure, strengthen risk management across the board and promote the quality and efficiency of business development to further enhance its capabilities to serve national strategies.

In 2013, CDB seriously implemented national macro-economic policy and insisted on making progress steadily, accomplishing achievements steadily and improving quality steadily. CDB fully leveraged its strength and role in medium- and long-term investment and financing and actively aided the government in its effort to stabilize growth, restructure the economy, and promote reforms. CDB's quality and efficiency of business development became further improved and capabilities to serve national strategies and combat risks were further strengthened. As of the end of 2013, CDB's total assets stood at more than Rmb8trn, outstanding bonds were Rmb5.9trn and outstanding loans were 7.04trn. Non-performing loan ratio came in at 0.48%, which had been below 1% for the 35th consecutive quarter and remained at low levels compared with its peers. Cumulative ratio of repayment of principal and interest to principal and interest receivables was 99.68%, which had remained elevated for fourteen consecutive years.

CDB has focused on providing services to investment activities in areas of national priorities over the past year and given a strong endorsement to areas including new-style urbanization, economic restructuring and improving people’s quality of life. CDB actively launched and supported research on new-style urbanization and selected Anhui, Liaoning and Suzhou as pilot areas. It explored diversified and sustainable funding sources for new-style urbanization and backed construction of infrastructure such as railways, highways and rail transit to boost cities' comprehensive carrying capacity. According to statistics, last year, CDB made urbanization-related loans of Rmb996.8bn, nearly two-thirds of renminbi loans issued by CDB during that year; Rmb106.0bn were earmarked for revamping China's shanty towns, up 36% from a year ago; and loans of more than Rmb100.0bn were extended to railway projects. All these fully reflected that state banks took the initiative to serve and implement national strategies.

To promote coordinated regional development, last year, CDB made new loans of Rmb394.3bn to old industrial bases in central and western and northeast China; loans to Tibet and four Tibetan-inhabited provinces stood at Rmb26.9bn and loans to Xinjiang reached Rmb50.4bn, and these loans were used to finance projects in Xinjiang and Tibet such as Lalin railway. To promote industrial restructuring, CDB provided financing support for mergers and restructuring of key industries such as electronics, pharmaceutical and rare earth. To promote the development of clean energy and the circular economy, CDB issued guidelines on evaluating industries with excess capacity in a bid to help absorb overcapacity in five industries such as steel and cement. New lending to the strategic emerging and cultural services sectors in the year was Rmb241.7bn and Rmb44.4bn respectively.

To help improve people’s livelihoods, CDB last year granted loans of Rmb34.5bn to the agricultural sector, up 60% from one year earlier. It helped push forward with the project of safe purchase and supply of food and build the food distribution system. CDB also financed water infrastructure to the tune of Rmb83.7bn and backed several key water works projects including the water resources project in Yunnan. CDB loans to social housing projects reached Rmb162.8bn in 2013, accounting for 60% of total bank lending to the sector nationwide. It distributed poverty alleviation loans worth Rmb222.1bn to support the development of public services, infrastructure and special industries in poorer areas. CDB also issued student loans of Rmb12.5bn, which benefited a total of 2.21 million young people across China. Small, micro and medium-sized enterprises received new loans totaling Rmb103.8bn from CDB. In addition, emergency loans of Rmb8.0bn were issued for disaster relief such as the Lushan earthquake or Ya'an earthquake.

International business is a key pillar of CDB in its effort to support national strategies. During the past year, CDB sticked to the principle of mutual benefit and win-win, made significant progress in the multilateral financial cooperation among the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, China-ASEAN and BRICS countries. It also optimized its global network of bank outlets and pushed through a number of major infrastructure projects aimed at improving connections and communications to support the development of an open economic system. As of end-2013, CDB lent foreign currency loans of over US\\$100.0bn and had outstanding foreign currency loans of US\\$292.2bn for its international business division, whose asset quality remained good.

Mr. Hu Huaibang pointed out that 2014 marks the start of China's efforts to comprehensively deepen reforms and it is also a key year for the reform and development of CDB. CDB shall strictly implement important spirit of the central government, grasp the basic tone of economic policies this year, which is to boost steady growth, insist on the direction of development financing, focus on business priorities and support the national strategy. He stressed that for CDB to excel going forward, strengthening Party building is key and efforts must be made to do a good job in Party building under the spirit of reform and innovation, thereby providing solid political guarantee for CDB's reform and development. CDB shall carefully study and implement the spirit of President Xi Jinping's key speeches, consolidate the achievements of the mass-line education campaign and launch work style and clean government as well as anti-corruption initiatives. He called on the Bank to become more aggressive, have a more keen sense of opportunities and responsibilities, and push through reforms and innovations with more courage and more wisdom so as to open a new chapter in development financing while supporting the nation's initiative to comprehensively deepen reforms.

At the conference, Mr. Zheng Zhijie, President of CDB, made an overall review of the Bank's operation and management in 2013 and deployed specific work for 2014. He said CDB will leverage its strengths in integrated financial services, rigorously channel funds via different sources and ramp up support for areas of national priorities such as new-style urbanization. It will firmly back agriculture, forestry and water works projects, promote social well-being such as education, health care and pension services and create a new situation of serving people's livelihoods. It will also steadily push forward its international business and support the development of the "silk road economic belt" and the "21st century maritime silk road" to achieve mutual benefit and reciprocity between China and its partners for joint development.