opened up gradually and in a focused manner ; a penal mechanism should be gradually established ; credit registry institutions should be regulated and market supervision should be enhanced. vice premier huang ju has also given important remarks on building corporate and personal credit registry. in order to strengthen market regulation and promote the establishment of a social credit system, the state council entrusted the people ’ s bank of china with the responsibility of promoting the institutional and system arrangements of a social registry system, regulate and promote the sound development of the loan registry industry, and approved the establishment of credit information system bureau to undertake the specific works. the pbc has been working to build a credit registry system since then. 2. facts about the building of a corporate and personal credit information database the database, as part of the infrastructure of a credit registry system, is to establish a set of credit information file for companies and individuals. at the beginning, loan, credit transactions and settlement account establishment information of companies and individuals are collected from commercial banks to provide inquiry services for commercial banks to make lending decisions ; gradually information will be collected from other sources to provide services to the whole society within the limit permitted by laws and regulations. 1 ) formerly, the corporate credit information database was known as bank credit registration and inquiry system, which was established in 1997 and started to operate in early 2002. this system has a three - level database, i. e. at city, provincial and national levels. enterprises ’ basis information, their borrowing from financial institutions and guarantees with financial institutions as well as major financial indicators of enterprises were collected by the system for major commercial banks in the country to inquire online. at end november 2005, the system contained information of 4. 52 million enterprises with rmb loan outstanding of 17. 36 trillion yuan, accounting for 90 percent of the total loan with financial institutions in the country. when the system was developed in 1997, it connected the city databases across the country to enable cross - region inquiry due to the fact that commercial banks did not have centralized databases. in 2005, the pbc started to build a nationwide corporate credit information database. there is a centralized database and each commercial bank has only one interface with the centralized database through its headquarters. more than 800 categories of data were collected, instead of the some 300 hundred previously. on 15 december 2005, the corporate credit information database was connected with all major commercial banks and started its trial operation. it provided real time inquiry service in shanghai, tianjin, zhejiang and fujian. we expect that in the

and remittance business. from april 2004, rmb bankcards issued by hong kong banks were accepted in the mainland. in november 2005, with approval of the state council, the pbc extended the scope of the rmb business position squaring and settlement arrangement for hong kong banks including raising the upper limits of some business and allowing hong kong residents to pay their consumption expenditures with checks in rmb denomination. after the national social security funds being allowed to invest in hong kong and other overseas markets, with approval of the state council, several policies were soon extended to facilitate different economic entities to invest in hong kong and other overseas market, including wealth management on behalf of clients, portfolio investment and insurance companies ’ overseas investments. in recent two years, bank of communications, china construction bank and bank of china were listed in the h share market of hong kong respectively. strengthened connection in commodity and service trade, investment and financial cooperation has brought many new demands for the payment system and fx market. the growth momentum of such demands is fairly evident. at the same time, both sides ’ attention on the establishment of financial infrastructure could ensure the safety and efficiency of financial services. for example, people had various concerns before the launch of personal rmb business, but it worked out smoothly since all relevant parties made sufficient preparations. the practice also proved that. these all indicated a promising trend. turning to the mainland, qfii was introduced into the mainland in recent years, and in this year, policies aimed at differentiating domestic investors investing in overseas financial products were issued. at the same time, efforts were made to develop the fx market by providing more risk - control tools and introduce market makers and otc transaction mode. therefore, the construction of financial infrastructure will face higher demands, such as how to prevent settlement risks and increase settlement efficiency to meet changing demands of the market. financial service is similar as goods trade in certain aspects. a country could import goods or attract foreign capitals to produce it in its homeland when it could not make it by itself. as to financial service, sometimes a country is not able to provide all services or make every service good. so financial service, including infrastructure service can also be provided by others. the mainland is now on the stage of improving the large - value payment system and establishing the retail payment system and disaster back - up system, therefore, hong kong is a good example for us to learn from its successful experiences in foreign exchange clearing and settlement. additionally, hong kong is developing