In ICBC Work Conference for the year 2010, ICBC will continue meeting the State's macro control policy. While maintaining a reasonable credit outlay at all times, concern should also be placed in mitigating and controlling credit risk. Lending will be restricted to the right customers. To provide a fillip to the economic structural change and development model, ICBC will undertake comprehensive initiative to improve its loan quality and standard of services.      

This year, ICBC strives to maintain a balanced growth in its loan portfolio, as related by the ICBC spokesperson. RMB loans in January rose steadily around RMB 110 billion from the end of last year. This answers the need of business entities for reasonable accessibility of funds. In terms of lending to which customers, ICBC follows the rule of lending under guarantee, under control, or "6 Supports" and "3 Restrictions".   

The "6 Supports" are: 1. Support in-progress projects, follow-up projects or new construction projects with contracts signed to ensure the smooth progress of key projects in the country. 2. Support companies in emerging industry, modern services, green companies that save energy or reduce emission, or engaged in revolving economy or low carbon. Re-orient the target loan to eco-friendly companies and increase the credit outlay to these industry sectors. 3. Support small enterprises to grow and offer them trade finance service, bring into the full play the service advantages of the exclusive institution and network financing platform for small enterprises. Create innovative loan and trade finance products tailored for small enterprises. Attract more customers by expanding the customer base to industry chain, supply chain, funding chain. The rise of loans to small enterprises should be higher than that of the total loans released by ICBC and more than that of last year. Offer trade finance service as an option instead of releasing liquidity loans. 4. Support the reasonable consumption needs of residents. Actively focus on adding new consumer loan products tailored to the reasonable needs of individual or families, especially offering housing loans to the first-home buyers. 5. Support the development of the regions under the Sate Plan, increase lending to Central and Western China, North East China and key counties/districts, support the coordinated regional development. 6. Use of the many products offered (RMB loans released to overseas projects, overseas loans under domestic guarantee, structural financing or buyer's credit) to support Chinese enterprise to "Go Global", support large companies in overseas mergers and acquisition, support the establishment of overseas energy bases, support Chinese enterprises to win engineering contracts.           

The "3 Restrictions" are: 1. Restrict lending to new projects except the State's key projects; 2. Restrict lending to companies of "high energy-consumption, high emission, resource-exhaustive companies". No loans released to enterprises or projects that do not meet the environmental protection requirements. 3. Restrict lending to over-production companies.

Meanwhile, to ensure the quality of credit assets, all new loans are checked against potential risk. Loans through regional governments' financing platforms to municipal infrastructure projects and land reserve will be managed according to current practice of customer list system. Loans released to real estate developers will be governed by the administrative measures of customer list system and based on the lending conditions. Lending is strictly forbidden to real estate developers or projects either shortage of capital or "4 licenses" incomplete. ICBC will not release new loans to real estate developers who try to "occupy land" or "delay the sale". All loans already released to them will be collected back.

ICBC will embrace the "Three Measures, One Guidance" of China Banking Regulatory Commission to strengthen the basic management of credit business, as related by the ICBC spokesperson. Management during and after lending, approval and drawdown of loan all follow the rule of "loan directly transferred to the borrower's transaction party". The objective is to apply a set of system and mechanism to better manage the credit risk.