At the China International Exhibition on Financial Banking Technology and Equipment 2001, Xiao Gang, vice-governor of the central People's Bank of China, said: "It has become a trend for banking and financial sectors in the world and Chinese banks should grasp the opportunities to strengthen themselves."

He pointed out that the restructuring of traditional services of commercial banks to embrace network banking was a huge project, and they should co-operate at all levels to avoid repetitive construction.

The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), one of the country's largest commercial banking operators, provides online banking services in about 300 cities, and transactions conducted through the Internet reached more than 200 billion yuan (US$24 billion) in the first half of the year.

Meanwhile, China Merchants Bank already gets more than 40 per cent of transactions by individual customers on the web.

Xiao also urged the banking sector to unify their transactions and settlement systems nationwide in order to reduce costs and improve efficiency, so as to compete with their foreign counterparts after China gets the WTO membership.

ICBC has decided to merge its 36 accounting centres in the country into two - one in Beijing and the other in Shanghai - by September 2002, to cut expenses on equipment and reduce financial risks with a unified control system.

The exhibition, held on the eve of China's accession to the WTO, has set "network banking services" as its main theme to discuss Chinese commercial banks' opportunities in the Internet age.

With the construction of nationwide financial information platforms and online banking, the demands for information technologies and products from banks will keep rising, and expectations on the exhibition are also high.

The event, held annually since 1993, has attracted 25 Chinese financial institutions and 186 businesses from around the world, including technology leaders IBM, Compaq, NCR and Wincor Nixdorf (WN).

"China's robust economic growth and the huge demands in banking sectors for advanced technologies and equipment will bring lots of opportunities for us," said Martin Loeser, vice-president with WN, the world's third largest automatic telling machine (ATM) maker.

The German business has built a research and development centre in Shanghai with US$23 million and is thinking about an ATM production base in China.

It was revealed that the company will try to make its China branch a listing firm on the Chinese stock markets in the coming years.

(chinadaily.com 09/17/2001)