SHANGHAI Rural Commercial Bank remained unscathed by the global financial tumult, with the bank expecting its before-provision profits to grow at least 17 percent this year, its president said yesterday.

"The global financial turmoil didn't impact on our bank's business and most of our small and medium-sized enterprise clients have not been hit by the cuts to external demand," Hou Funing, president of the bank, told Shanghai Daily yesterday.

"We expect our before-provision profits to grow at least to 3 billion yuan (US$438.95 million) this year with a stable business," he said.

The bank's before-provision profits sat at 2.56 billion yuan at the end of last year, up 48 percent on a year ago.

"As most Shanghai-based SMEs are not labor-intensive, we don't see our clients falling victim to the threat of shrinking external demand," Hou said.

The bank allocated an extra 10 percent lending quota to SMEs and had not seen a surge of lending demand from the group yet, Hou said.

The bank's total lending this year would amount to about 9.9 billion yuan after the additional quota was granted by the People's Bank of China, the bank told Shanghai Daily earlier this month.

The bank has about 6,000 corporate clients, 92 percent of which are SMEs. The rural bank was set up in August 2005 by merging the 234 rural cooperatives in the city to better serve the rural economy and SMEs. Since it was established, the bank has allocated a combined provision against bad loans of 5.3 billion yuan.

The bank, in which Australia and New Zealand Banking Group holds 19.9 percent, aims to get listed "when its business and the market conditions are consolidated," Hou said.

The bank yesterday launched its first credit card in Shanghai, mainly targeting the owners of SMEs.

The bank has more than 3 million retail clients in the city. The bank now has about 340 outlets in Shanghai, with the majority located outside of the city's outer ring.