A spokesman for the Bank of China (BOC) confirmed Monday the state-owned foreign exchange bank hopes to go public in 2005, but said there should be two prerequisites -- completion of its joint-stock reform and regrouping, and maturity of conditions in the capital market.

The BOC will gradually move from being a wholly state-owned commercial bank to a joint-stock bank following the State Council's injection of 22.5 billion US dollars to increase its cash capital, said newly-appointed spokesman Zhu Min.

He said it was the "core task" of the BOC to standardize its board of directors, shareholders' meetings, and a supervision body,as well as to separate the management from the board of directors,so as to promote good corporate governance.

The BOC's non-performing loan (NPL) ratio was still high at theend of January -- standing at 15.64 percent and sliding only 0.28 percentage points month on month.

Zhu Min explained that the BOC had recently dealt with its bad debt problem "sum by sum" and tried to hold those responsible in the bank to account, instead of disposing of the NPLs "in one large sum" in the past.

The BOC's NPL rate should be brought down to that of common international commercial banks by the end of 2004 and the proportion should be "true, not exaggerated", said Zhu.

Moreover, the Bank of China would set up an incentive mechanismthat coincides the interests of the staff with the bank's businesstargets.

Zhu said that more of the 180,000 staff would be reassigned to positions where they dealt with clients face to face, as part of the effort to sharpen the bank's competitiveness.

The bank's per capita profit is already the highest among the country's so-called "big four", which also include the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, the China Construction Bank and the Agricultural Bank of China.

Information transparency is also targeted in the bank's new year reform. One example is that its spokespersons have increased from one to three, including a female manager familiar with debt management.