Deposit Balance Reached a New High and

International Settlement Volume Exceeded USD 100 Billion.

2004 saw another major development of CCB’s foreign exchange business. CCB foreign currency deposit balance exceeded USD 12 billion, an increase of USD 983 million. This represented a rise of 1.02 percentage point over the early period of this year compared to the other three big banks, namely ICBC, BOC and ABC. International settlement volume also made a breakthrough, amounting to USD 107.6 billion, an increase of 31.38% over the previous year. CCB foreign exchange business hit a historical high and entered a new stage with the fastest growth.

In 2004, CCB made a further research on and analysis of foreign exchange business profitability, nailed down a practical development strategy, explored effective means to make foreign exchange services progress, and strengthened innovation capability in management, products and marketing. First, considered foreign exchange business as one of strategic businesses and paid preferential attention to it in terms of development measures and resources allocation; second, took foreign exchange services into the overall business development schedule in 2004 and set up foreign exchange business examination system; third, continued to introduce new foreign exchange products tailored to the market and improved core strength throughout the whole bank in foreign exchange service. All these approaches encouraged CCB staff to make further dedications to foreign exchange business growth. Guided by CCB headquarters, all branches earnestly carried out arrangement from the work conference of international business, centered on profit maximization, increased the input into foreign exchange business, strengthened evaluation mechanism, and conducted various marketing campaigns. And all outlets accelerated the development of products innovation, set up all kinds of internal control mechanisms, and promoted the improvement of profitability and management capability in foreign exchange business. In this way, CCB has made the foreign exchange business development in profitability, scale and quality into a reality.