The China Export and Import Bank (Eximbank) signed agreements in Beijing Monday with six Chinese provincial government departments to use 5.59 billion yuan (US$698.75 million) of Japanese governmental loans.

An Eximbank spokesman said the loans would be used in nine projects in China's underdeveloped areas in Anhui, Guizhou, Henan, Hunan and Jilin provinces and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region to improve local infrastructure, environmental protection, education, energy structure and scientific research.

The loan projects include the establishment of urban natural gas networks in Henan and Anhui, a comprehensive environmental improvement project in Nanning City of Guangxi, a poverty relief scheme in the Wuling mountainous areas of Hunan, and various educational programs in Anhui, Guangxi, Guizhou, Henan and Jilin.

Over the past years, the Eximbank has established good cooperation with the Japan Bank for International Cooperation over decades of managing Japanese loans, the spokesman said. By the end of June this year, the Eximbank had transferred 137.861 billion yuan (US$16.64 billion) of loans, 78 percent of which was in Japanese yen.

(Xinhua News Agency July 21, 2003)