Vice-Premier Wen Jiabao has urged China's financial sector to open
up gradually and strengthen supervision to ensure its safety,
efficiency and stability.
Wen, also a Standing Committee member of the Political Bureau of
the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, made the
remark at a national conference on banking, securities and
insurance in Beijing on Friday.
He
stressed that the financial sector served as the core of the modern
economy, and it was important to push forward financial reform,
open up the sector, and build a modern financial system and
companies.
"We must conscientiously follow economic and financial rules and
exercise administration and supervision according to the law, and
the financial sector must correctly strike a balance between
minimizing financial risks and fuelling economic growth," the
vice-premier said.
Party-building and honest governance within the financial sector
should be strengthened to guarantee reform and development, he
said.
Wen said both the latest changes in the international economic and
financial situation and China's reform, opening-up drive and new
economic tasks required the country to secure its economic and
financial stability and safety, upgrade its financial
competitiveness and take precautions to reduce financial risks.
Wen listed this year's major tasks for the financial sector as
further reducing the rate of non-performing debt, steadily
advancing financial reforms, better supervising financial
practices, gradually opening up the sector to the outside world,
and improving financial services.
Reducing bad debt remained a vital task, said the vice-premier, who
urged all regions and departments to work together to combat debt
evasion in various forms.
The structure of credit should be optimized and new bad debt kept
under strict control. The securities and insurance sectors should
also improve the quality of assets and trim bad assets.
He
urged wider reforms of state-owned commercial banks and insurance
companies and the establishment of a shareholding system. Reforms
of the rural financial system should accelerate to help support
agriculture and the rural economy.
The vice-premier said the capital market should play an important
role in industrial restructuring and reform of state-owned
enterprises, encouraging social investment, and optimizing the
allocation of financial resources.
One of the principal tasks will be to strengthen financial
supervision, while rectifying and regulating the financial order
and speeding up work on a social credit system.
Wen said China would step-by-step open its financial market to
qualified foreign-funded financial organizations, and improve
financial corporate governance through joint ventures and
shareholdings by foreign investors.
Qualified Chinese financial companies are also encouraged to invest
overseas or set up overseas branches.
In
improving services, banks should give more credit support to
projects backed by government bonds, enterprises with good credit
ratings, agriculture, small and medium-sized enterprises, the
development of western China, laid-off workers, and personal
consumption.
(China Daily January 27, 2003)