China considering big changes to banking supervision policies
BEIJING, (AFP): China's top legislature is considering big changes in the banking supervision policies to put more emphasis on risk management by bank watchdogs, state press said Sunday.
The bank supervision draft law, the first of its kind in China, seeks to change supervision policies from simply monitoring the legitimacy of operations to putting equal importance on both legitimacy and risk control. China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC) chairman Liu Mingkang said that under the law the CBRC would establish guidelines to exercise cross-border supervision together with bank watchdogs of other countries and regions. It will also set up effective guidelines to minimize financial risks for commercial banks, the Xinhua news agency reported.
Under the draft law, the CBRC is authorized to oversee all banks and financial institutions in China, investigate illegal banking operations and administer punishments for violations of the law. Since the CBRC was founded on April 28 this year, it has carried out a series of measures to control banking risks, including investigating the non-credit operations of the four state-owned commercial banks. It has announced that all domestic banks, both state-owned and joint-stock ones, are required to adopt the commonly-accepted rule to sort loans into five grades, from best to worst, next year.
Despite its efforts to impose more stringent risk control standards on China's banks, poor management and huge debt loads are hampering progress. The CBRC has also reportedly met considerable resistance at the central bank, which has seen its once immense powers over the financial sector gradually reduced to leave it now in charge of just monetary policy.
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