Recovered assets added up to 2.6 billion yuan (313.3 million dollars), including 2.4 billion yuan (289.2 million dollars) in cash, a bank spokesman revealed.

While holding the best assets among China's "Big Four" state-owned commercial banks, CCB vowed to work to further cut down the NPA ratio, which took the lead to descend to below 10 percent -- 9.25 percent -- at the end of 2003.

Excess loans to state-owned enterprises have over the past decades piled up a mountain of NPAs in the "Big Four", including the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Bank of China and Agricultural Bank of China, analysts note.

China set up four asset management companies in 1999 to take over and resolve a combined 1.4 trillion yuan (168.7 billion dollars) in non-performing debts from the state-owned banks. Correspondingly, China Cinda Asset Management Corp. is responsiblefor bad debts transferred from CCB and the State Development Bank.

But the NPAs left in the banks -- paired with new ones -- is still believed to be an enormous figure.

CCB and the Bank of China obtained 22.5 billion dollars in foreign exchange reserve each from the central government at the end of last year as replenished capital.

So far, the Bank of China has announced the timetable for stockmarket listing -- sometime in 2005, while industrial insiders believe that CCB would collect money from private investors even earlier -- probably this year.

Earlier, CCB reported soaring profits of 6.6 billion yuan (795.2 million dollars) in January before setting aside provisions for bad loans.

Last year the bank earned 51.2 billion yuan (6.2 billion dollars) in operating profits.

And the bank has set a profit growth target of 18 percent for this year. CCB President Zhang Enzhao said improved corporate governance and internal structural reforms would be the two ways the bank hopes to achieve its growth goal.

Zhang said his bank would give "key loan support" to energy, communication and raw material projects as encouraged by government policies.