Another challenge for BBC this year is striving to maintain its net interest margin, which Suwatchai acknowledged could be slightly down after China's central bank recently cut benchmark interest rates. The People's Bank of China lowered the one-year deposit rate by 25 basis points to 2.5 per cent, while the one-year lending rate now stands at 5.35 per cent.
Fan Zhigang, deputy head of the Financial Research Institute at the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), last week said at the fifth anniversary of ICBC (Thai) that even though the Chinese economy had slowed, the mainland could maintain growth of 6-7 per cent for the next five to 10 years, backed by the purchasing power of local consumers and the migration of rural residents into cities.