Bank of China sees 0.74pc growth in net profit

BEIJING: Chen Siqing, president of BOC, said: "Commercial banks have reached the end of the era when they had double-digit profit growth and have entered the age of single-digit growth.

"But this is quite normal as banks are facing pressure from slowing economic growth and increasing risks. At the same time, they have to shoulder the responsibility to support the real economy by lowering interest rates."

The bank's net interest margin fell 13 basis points year-onyear to 2.12 percent in 2015, which was in part caused by the lowering of interest rates five times last year by the People's Bank of China. Chen said he expected the bank's NIM to drop further in 2016, but the decrease will be smaller.

"Our profit growth will remain stable this year and will hopefully remain at last year's level," he said.

In order to achieve that goal, BOC will try to increase profits from its overseas operations, increase its intermediary business income, and expand its personal finance and global financial market businesses, gain more profits from resolving of nonperforming loans, and more tightly control its expenses.

He said the bank will seize opportunities as China is moving forward with the implementation of major national development strategies. It will adapt to the trend of the yuan's internationalization by increasing its efforts in business and product innovation, accelerate the construction of a financial pipeline along the routes of the Belt and Road Initiative, and insist on the parallel development of Internet finance, as well as the networking of financial services, he said. Other large commercial lenders that announced their annual results saw the same trend of flat profit growth.