The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) intends to orient half of its loans to small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) over the next three years.

An ICBC spokesman said the bank has designed a plan to attract SMEs, and expects SME customers to double to 100,000. Loans to SMEs will rise from 1 trillion yuan (128.2 billion U.S. dollars) to 2 trillion yuan, and account for over 50 percent of its total loans.

At the end of 2006, outstanding ICBC loans to SMEs reached 1.1 trillion yuan, an increase of 183 billion yuan or 16.6 percent over the previous year.

The spokesman said that boosting its SME business will allow the bank to develop corporate financing, clearing, investment banking, e-banking, agent commissions and bank card activities.

Statistics show that China has 42 million SMEs, which make up 99 percent of all Chinese enterprises.

SMEs provided 75 percent of job opportunities of all domestic enterprises, offered half of the products and services and contributed half of the taxes.