The China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC) has recently published its 2006 annual report with up-to-date releases of the detailed statistics on China’s banking industry. By the end of 2006, China’s banking sector comprised a total of 19,797 banking institutions with 183,897 outlets and 2,732,394 staff.

The top three banking institutions were large state-owned commercial banks, joint-stock commercial banks and rural cooperative financial institutions. The state-owned institutions held 55% of the total assets of the banking sector in 2006. The joint-stock commercial banks and rural cooperative financial institutions accounted for 12% and 10% of the total assets respectively.

Other types of banking institutions included policy banks, city commercial banks, urban credit cooperatives (UCCs), rural credit cooperatives (RCCs), rural commercial banks, postal saving bank, financial asset management companies and locally incorporated foreign bank subsidiaries.

In addition, there were five types of non-bank financial institutions including trust companies, corporate finance companies, leasing companies, money brokerage companies and automobile finance companies.

By the end of Year 2006, the total assets of the banking sector reached RMB 43.95 trillion, an increase of RMB 6.48 trillion or 17.3 percent over 2005. During the same period, the total liabilities of the banking sector reached RMB 41.71 trillion, an increase of RMB 5.90 trillion or 16.5 percent. The aggregate owners’ equity of the banking sector totaled at RMB 2.24 trillion, a growth of RMB 576.7 billion or 34.7 percent.

This annual report also provided the detailed and comprehensive analysis of issues covering macro-economic and financial environment, development of China’s banking Industry, regulatory framework and policies. The full report is available at the CBRC website, or it can be downloaded from this website (PDF, 3.26M).