Press Conference by the Minister for Financial Services

(Excerpt)

January 25 , 2005

Q.

According to the total amount of Non-Performing Loans (NPLs) of all banks released on January 21, 2005, the disposal of NPLs has progressed steadily. What is your prospect of achieving the government's target of halving major banks' NPL ratio by the end of March 2005?

A.

To the present day, we have been implementing various measures of the Financial Revitalization Program in order to resolve the NPLs problem. Major banks, making steady progress, are on the track to achieve the goal of halving NPL ratio.

As stated at my New Year's press conference, we must go through the ''last tunnel'' successfully, so we need to make steady efforts to achieve the target without slowing down the pace.

Also, for small and medium-sized regional financial institutions, we are making efforts to enhance relationship banking functions so that the NPL ratio is on a downward trend and the reform is progressing steadily as a whole. It is important for us to continue making efforts in this policy direction, in order to improve financial strength and reliability of regional financial institutions.