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 businesses Friday in Beijing.

He stressed that based on the experience acquired in the past economic and financial work, it is important to bear in mind that finance served as the core of the modern economy, and efforts should be done to unswervingly push forward financial reform and opening up and build a modern financial system and modern financial companies.

"We must conscientiously follow economic and financial rules and exercise administration and supervision according to law, and the financial sector must correctly strike a balance between preventing financial risks and fueling economic growth," the vice-premier said.

Party building and clean governance within the financial sector should be effectively strengthened to provide a strong guarantee for financial 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 ability to take precautions against and 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, improving and enhancing supervision over the financial sector, gradually expanding the opening of the sector to the outside world, and effectively 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 strictly kept under 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 share-holding system. Reforms of the rural financial system should be accelerated to give finance full play in supporting agriculture and the rural economy.

The vice-premier said the capital market should play its important role in boosting industrial restructuring and reform of state-owned enterprises, encouraging social investment, and optimizing the allocation of financial resources.

It is a principal task to strengthen financial supervision in an all-round way, while continuing to rectify and regulate the financial order and speed up building 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 share holding 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 rating, agriculture, small and medium-sized enterprises, the development of west China, laid-off workers, and personal consumption.

(People's Daily January 27, 2003)