From the Financial Times (link)
The sprawling savings arm of China’s monopoly postal service has begun making loans for the first time, a move intended to help it prepare for its transformation into the country’s fifth-largest bank.
After years of delay, officials say Beijing is close to launching reform of the Postal Savings and Remittance Bureau, which has more than 36,000 branches and held Rmb1,300bn ($162bn, €134bn, £93bn) in deposits at the end of 2005.
“It should happen very soon,” an official at the China Banking Regulatory Commission said yesterday.
