Bank of China (ABC), the country's last unlisted major lender, is gearing up to go public and wants help from the government to wipe out its mountain of non-performing loans.

 

The bank has submitted a plan on its share-holding reforms to the State Council, which provides details on its financial restructuring and the introduction of strategic investors, according to Han Zhongqi, the bank's vice president.

 

With its balance sheet at the end of 2005 showing its bad loan ratio at 26.31 percent and non-performing loans topping 739 billion yuan, ABC has a lot of work to do to transform itself from a state-owned bank to a joint stock company listed on the stock market.

 

A plan to sort out its mounting unrecoverable debts is still being discussed.

 

Gao Wei, an official with the Research and Development Center of the State Council, said the massive bad debts, incurred through lending to the rural sector and loss-making state-owned firms, should be bailed out by the government.

 

Both the central bank and the Ministry of Finance should offer ABC a capital injection, said Zhong Wei, director of the Financial Research Center under the Beijing Normal University. Treasury bonds and re-loans can also be used to clean up the debts, he added.

 

There has been heated debate over whether the debt-laden lender should be split into a group of provincial-level banks to better facilitate local agricultural funding.

 

Three other state banks -- the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, the Bank of China and China Construction Bank -- have either been transformed into joint-stock firms or listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange after strengthening their corporate governance and efficiency.

 

(Xinhua News Agency December 7, 2006)