The Beijing News
April 10, 2009

The Ministry of Finance has imposed a pay cap for executives of state-owned financial institutions.

The Ministry announced yesterday that executives' pretax pay of 2008 should be "no more than 90% of the previous year's level"; for those firms whose performance declined during 2008, their executives should expect a big pay cut of 20%.

However, the Ministry didn't specify whether executives who have already been paid more than the specified rate will have to return the excess part of their pay.

According to the article in today's Beijing News, Li Jun, president of Bank of Communications received 1.75 million yuan in compensation in 2008 while Yang Chao, president of the Bank of China had a pretax income of 1.507 million yuan, 6.8% and 10% less than their pay in 2007, respectively.

In other income-related news, numbers released by the National Bureau of Statistics yesterday indicate that in 2008, the average annual income of employed urban citizens was 29,229 yuan.

Income levels of different economic sectors vary greatly: the securities and financial industry tops the list with average pay at 172,123 yuan per annum, despite the market gloom. In contrast, the average pay in the textile industry is only 16,222 yuan.

Also on the front page of today's Beijing News:

• The big photo shows customers displaying their free egg coupons. A company whose name was unspecified by the paper distributed these coupons to be redeemed for 1.5 kilogram of eggs to the public yesterday. An elderly woman had her arm broken in a frenzied crowd trying to get hold of coupons.

• Under the main photo, a headline in the right box announces the news that Kim Jong-il was reelected yesterday as the chairman of the National Defence Commission of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.