By the end of December 2004, China's national foreign exchange reserve amounted to US$609.9 billion, up 51.3 percent year on year, with the growth rate 10.5 percentage points higher than the previous year, according to latest statistics issued by the People's Bank of China on January 13.

By the end of 2004, the exchange rate of the RMB against the US dollars was 8.2765:1, basically at the same level with the previous yearend.

In the year 2004, statistics showed, the People's Bank of China kept exercising a stable monetary policy by using various monetary instruments and properly controlling the total amount of currency credits, and as a result both curbed the excessive growth of monetary credits and met reasonable needs of economic development.

In general, the monetary policy adopted in macro-control had yielded initial results with the whole-year financial operation remained sound and goals of monetary credit control basically attained.

(People Daily January 18, 2005)