Our funding sources for foreign currencies consist primarily of export credit facilities, overseas or domestic bond issues, international syndicated loans, and loans from foreign governments. Funding for foreign currencies is largely dependent on our lending levels. In 2003, we raised a total of USD 1.5 billion in foreign currency financing, of which, USD 500.0 million was raised through the domestic bond market and another USD 500.0 million from domestic borrowings. In addition, we purchased USD 500.0 million in the domestic market through foreign exchange transactions.

On September 28, 2004, we successfully issued USD 600.0 million in 10-year bonds in the US and offered Euro 325.0 million in 5.5-year bonds outside of the US. This global offering marked our re-entry into the global capital markets.  Our last such offering occurred in 1999. In addition, this was the first time that CDB issued Euro denominated debt and we are only the second entity in China, after the MoF, that has ever issued such debt.

Both issuances were well received by international investors. The USD bond and the Euro bond offerings were oversubscribed by 2.5 times and 1.75 times, respectively. We succeeded in attracting close to 50% of the total subscriptions from large international institutions. We also managed to attract a diversified pool of investors including leading global banks, asset management firms and insurance companies. The success of our debt issuance overseas demonstrates the level of confidence that investors have in our track record of performance and our financial position.

On December 28, 2004, we successfully issued USD 500.0 million of debt in the domestic inter-bank market. Of this amount, USD 400.0 million and USD 100.0 million were in the form of 5-year floating rate bonds and 3-year fixed rate bonds, respectively. This represented the second time that we issued foreign currency debt in the domestic market since 2003. Like our international offering, our domestic offering attracted a range of investors including state-owned banks, joint stock banks, city commercial banks, insurance companies, securities firms and foreign bank branches in China. Both the 5-year floating rate bond and the 3-year fixed rate bond were oversubscribed by 1.5 times and 1.3 times, respectively.