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By Xie Fang

The China CITIC Bank Corporation (601998), whose stocks are included in the Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) Emerging Markets Index, released its audited semi-annual financial statements on Monday, reporting a moderate but steady business growth in H1.

The bank generated a total of roughly 81.05 billion yuan in operating revenue over the first half of 2018, a year-on-year growth of 5.85 percent. It's net profit also increased by 7.12 percent on a yearly basis to reach around 25.72 billion yuan by the end of June.

During the reporting period, the bank saw its basic earnings per share rise by 8.16 percent from a year earlier to 0.53 yuan while its weighted average rate of return on equity also climbed by 0.2 percentage points year-on-year to 13.96 percent, indicating a slightly improved profitability.

The bank's total asset increased by 2.29 percent from the beginning of this year to hit nearly 5.81 trillion yuan by the end of the period.

The bank said in the statements that the pace of its business expansion during the first half of this year had met its goal, with a 5.71 percent year-on-year increase in credits and a 5.29 percent year-on-year rise in deposits.

The bank also mitigated the negative impact from its non-performing loans on its asset quality as the ratio of the amount of its loans overdue for more than 90 days to that of its total non-performing loans had dropped by up to 15.46 percentage points to 93.92 percent during the reporting period.