The New Oriental School, China's prominent private school, which helps Chinese students prepare for foreign university entrance exams such as the TOFEL, GRE and GMAT, received an interest-free loan worth of 1 billion yuan (about US$120 million) from a Beijing bank.

Yu Minhong, president of the school, said the money would be used to build a campus for 15,000 students in Beijing, according to Friday's Beijing News.

Yan Xiaoyan, president of the Beijing City Commercial Bank said though many schools received bank loans recently, it is the first time that a private school can get such a large mortgage-free loan in Beijing.

"Banks begin to trust private schools and financial institutes are more confident about the market of private education, " Yan was quoted as saying.

In recent years, the bank has large sum of lending businesses with many public universities including the prominent Tsinghua University.

The New Oriental School is the most prominent school in China that helps tens of thousands of students who want to go broad prepare for tests of academic and English-language skills.

Since its founding in 1993, the New Oriental School has trained more than two million students. Besides its twelve offices in major Chinese cities, the school has branches in Toronto and Montreal.
 
(Xinhua News Agency October 9, 2004)