Here it is. Good afternoon. I am Zhang Yunting, Joint Company Secretary of CITIC Limited and Director of the Office of the Board of Directors. We warmly welcome investors, and analysts, and media friends who take time to attend CITIC Limited 2023 half-year results briefing, and we thank you for your continued attention and support for CITIC. Today's briefing is conducted in a combination of offline meeting and webcast, with Mandarin as the language of the conference, with English simultaneous interpretation. The meeting has two sessions, namely presentation of CITIC Limited 2023 half-year results and the Q&A. Today's meeting is attended by Mr. Zhu Hexin, Chairman of CITIC Limited. Mr. Xi Guohua, Vice Chairman and General Manager. Mr. Liu Zhengjun, Executive Director and Deputy General Manager. Mr. Wang Guoquan, Executive Director and Deputy General Manager. Mr. Xu Zuo, Deputy General Manager.
Mr. Fang Heying, Deputy General Manager; Ms. Mao Yining, General Manager of Financial Management Department. First of all, please welcome Ms. Mao Yining to introduce the 2023 half-year results of CITIC Limited.
Dear analysts, investors, and media friend, and the friends from the media, good afternoon. Now I'm going to report to you the 2023 half-year results of CITIC Limited. In the first half of 2023, global external environment is confronted with a lot of uncertainties, with a slowed down economic growth and this, and also a slow recovery of the Chinese economy. Against the external challenges, the company is committed to seek the progress while pursuing stability. We've recorded a revenue of CNY 334 billion, a year-on-year growth of 2.8%.
With the falling commodity price and the narrow interest rate spread in the banking sector, CITIC Limited reported stable revenue growth through business expansion. In the first half of the year, we realized a net profit of CNY 57.5 billion, and the net profit attributable to the parent company of CNY 32.1 billion, a Y-O-Y decrease of 5.9% and 22.6% respectively, excluding the one-off revaluation gain of CITIC Securities consolidated earnings of CNY 10.3 billion in the same period. On a comparable basis, underlying net profit and net profit attributable to the parent company increased by 13% and 2.3% respectively. The financial sector is playing a very important consolidation role, and we see that the...
We see that the revenue and the net profit attributable to the parent company increased by 5.1% and 7.9%, respectively. The share contribution increased to 41% and 74%, representing a roughly respective improvement of 1 percentage point and 5 percentage points. The non-financial sector continued to drive technology, innovation and transformation, expand to overseas markets and address challenges arising from insufficient demand. Specifically, the net profit attributable to the parent company's three segments, advanced intelligent manufacturing, new consumption, and urbanization increased by 25%, 25%, and 2.3% respectively due to the declining commodity price. Net profit to parent company in advanced materials segment decreased by 25% year-on-year.
By the end of June, the market capitalization of CITIC Limited reached HKD 272 billion, up 13% from the beginning of the year, outperforming Hang Seng Index. CITIC Limited continues to unleash the value of its subsidiaries. CITIC Metal was listed on the A-share market as one of the first companies under the registration-based IPO system. The market capitalization of listed companies held by CITIC Limited has exceeded CNY 400 billion, an increase of 19% as compared to the beginning of the year. The company attaches great importance to providing reasonable returns to investors with a stable and sustainable dividend policy. After considering market dynamics and the financial position, the interim dividend of CNY 0.18 per share is recommended, a year-on-year increase of CNY 0.01 .
The interim dividend payout ratio is increased annually to 16% from 12%. In terms of external ratings, in the first half of the year, we see that the market influence of the company is expanding. S&P Global affirmed our BBB+ rating and revised the outlook to positive, improving our image in the bond market. Fortune 500 published its top 500 list, and CITIC Limited ranked seventeenth on Fortune 500, advancing two positions and increasing the position by six years consecutively. And CITIC Limited has been shortlisted for top 100 ESG-listed company in China by CCTV, ranked second among conglomerates, acknowledged as a leader in ESG development of listed companies. So the above is the introduction of the overall performance of the company. Now, I'm going to dive into the five business segments in detail.
For the comprehensive financial services, it recorded revenue of CNY 138.3 billion, profit of CNY 27.5 billion, up 3.1% and 7.9% respectively in the first half of the year. We leveraged the advantage of having comprehensive financial licenses to serve the real economy and promote high quality growth of our financial segment, which surpassed CNY 10 trillion in total assets for the first time. The company is committed to risk prevention and compliant operations. The scale of non-performing assets and non-performing loan ratio have continued to fall. Meanwhile, the asset quality has significantly improved....
Amid the continued narrowing of interest rates for us in the banking sector, CITIC Bank realized an operating income of CNY 105.9 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 2.2%, a profit of CNY 36.1 billion, a year-on-year increase of 11%. We see that the value of deposits and loans increased by 8.5% and 4.4% respectively, as compared to the beginning of the year, particularly the increment for both general corporate loans and personal deposits hit record high. The balance of non-performing loans decreased by 0.6% compared to the beginning of the year. The NPL ratio declined by 0.06 percentage points to 1.21%.
The provision coverage ratio increased by 7.09 percentage points to 208.28%. It achieved double-digit growth in credit value across all key areas, such as inclusive finance, medium- and long-term financing for manufacturing industry, green credit, strategic emerging industries, and agricultural loans. CITIC Securities proactively scaled down commodity business, recorded revenue of CNY 42.8 billion, a decrease of 6.8%, maintained stable profitability, with record profits of CNY 11.3 billion, up 1% year-on-year, despite the volatility in the capital market.
It has maintained a competitive advantage in investment banking, achieved 11% year-on-year growth in investment banking business, while actively building a world-class securities company with a market share of 24% in equity writing, 6.3% in bond underwriting, and 33% in Asia M&A, all of which ranked first in industry. It has maintained a leading position in both management and asset management. The custodial client asset scale remains stable at overall CNY 10 trillion, representing a 7% increase as compared to the beginning of the year. The securities firm's asset management scale has exceeded 1.5 trillion, consistently ranking first in the industry. CITIC Trust recorded revenue of CNY 2.2 billion and profit of CNY 1.3 billion, year-on-year decrease of 33% and 13% respectively.
Following the transformation of the trust industry, it accelerated transformation of the trust business. Rapid growth was observed in annuity services, response services, inclusive financial services, and public welfare, and the charitable trust. Assets of innovative businesses surpassed CNY 1.2 trillion to account for more than 70% in total, positive results from risk mitigation efforts. It's accelerated progress in disposing risky projects in the first half of the year, resulting in a considerable settlement recovery in real estate and the urban investment project. CITIC Prudential Life is committed to implementing new regulations under the C-ROSS II, track to, balance growth in both NBV and NBV margin, recording original premium income of CNY 17 billion. And by 7.7% year-on-year, and a double-digit growth in operating in the first half of 2023.
It has realized a significant growth in new business, achieved double-digit growth in both the business premium and new business value through distribution channels, and V, V margin in bancassurance to show great improvements. Effective mechanism in manpower with high productivity, the number of MDRT credited agents reached 828, a year-on-year growth of 17%. The above is about the financial segment. As to the advanced intelligence manufacturing, recorded a revenue of CNY 24.1 billion, and a profit of CNY 426 million, a year-on-year increase of 0.2% and a 25% respectively. It continued to optimize global industry planning, exploring international markets, leading to a surge in overseas revenue and a steady increase in market share.
It strengthened efforts in major scientific research projects, resulting in breakthroughs in various key technologies and products, which effectively supported the business expansion and profit growth, realized positive interaction between technological innovation and industrial development. CITIC Dicastal actively expanded both domestic and overseas market, leading to a steady increase in global market share and a double-digit growth in profitability. Remarkable results has been achieved in market expansion, recorded a significant increase in overseas orders due to efforts to strengthen global business development, supplied materials for all major EV companies in China, achieving an 18% and a 29% increase in sales volume for aluminum wheels and aluminum castings, respectively. And the overseas sales volume of aluminum wheels grew by 25% year-on-year. The gross profit margin for overseas sales increased by 7 percentage point to 26%.
Consistent progress in product R&D carried out the R&D of integrated traces, die casting projects for automobiles, in which the preliminary trial production was successful and contributed to the lightweight development of China automotive industry. CITIC Heavy Industries realized revenue of CNY 4.7 billion, and profit CNY 190 million, an increase of 9.9% and 3.3% respectively, following our strengths and technology innovation. It enhanced the core technology on decommitted to providing China strategy, upgrading the country's manufacturing sector, and building projects with vital importance to the country. Provided high-strength metal castings and forgings for Shenzhou -16 spacecraft, achieved several production of key manufacturing machines, such as large-scale ball mills and semi-autogenous mills in China, recorded a record high in new orders, expanding the overseas market for mining equipment and offshore wind power.
Total revenue of new effective orders reached CNY 7.1 billion in the first half of the year. The overseas orders accounted for 30%. For advanced materials, it recorded a revenue of CNY 130.6 billion, up 3.7%, and a profit of CNY 5.8 billion, down 25%. Consistently progress major energy projects, ensure steady production for the stable supply of national strategic resources, actively extend the business planning for strategic upstream and downstream collaborations, and boosted resilience and competitiveness of the industrial chain. CITIC Pacific Special Steel overcame the adverse impact of a sharp decline in market demand. Revenue increased by 13% year-on-year to CNY 58.3 billion.
While the total profits of member companies of China Steel Association declined by 69% year-on-year, and 45% of which was loss-making. CITIC Pacific Special Steel achieved profits of CNY 3 billion, a decline of only 20%. Stable operations throughout the cycle, seizing the opportunity from dual carbon policy, the company actively ventured into new markets such as wind power and new energy vehicles. Steel sales reached a record high of 9.4 million tons, a surge about 23%, of which steel and energy and foreign trade sales saw remarkable growth, with an increase of 88% and 55%. Prominent scientific and technological innovation, the company obtained 184 authorized patents and 89 invention patents. It took the lead in developing world's first, the low-carbon evaluation standards for special steel.
A number of high-end products, including aviation bearings, high-temperature alloys, received order certification and were consistent, delivered on time. Optimization, upgrading of business planning after the successful M&A of Tianjin Pipe Corporation. The company has become the world's largest manufacturer of a special, seamless steel pipes with a production capacity of 5 million tons, with integrated efforts in marketing the, and technology R&D and the production of sales volume steel pipes increased steadily. For Sino Iron, due to decreasing iron ore prices, revenue declined by 21%.
In terms of production operation, we maintained stable production and operations in the first half year. After addressing unfavorable factors such as labor shortage, weak demand from steel mills, and inflationary pressure, the company successfully maintained stable production operations, and it produced 10.41 million wet tons of magnetite ore concentrate powder, which remained largely unchanged year-on-year. CITIC Metal recorded revenue of CNY 61.2 billion, down 2% year-on-year. After addressing falling commodity prices, profit decreased to CNY 1.07 billion, a wide year-on-year 32% decline due to fair value loss on convertible bonds from the rise in the stock price of our subsidiary, Ivanhoe Mines.
We also optimized the trade structure, prioritized the risk prevention, and leveraged our resources and channel advantages to adjust our trade product portfolio and scale up copper trading business, raised market share in non-ferrous metal trading, with revenue contribution exceeding 50%. Also, smooth progress in overseas project contribution. The first and second phases of the construction of Ivanhoe Mines, KK Copper Mine, and DR Congo, have maintained very smooth operation. CITIC Pacific Energy achieved a profit of CNY 318 million, year-on-year growth of 85%, due to the increased proportion of low-priced long-term coal contracts. We also have a new energy installation capacity, doubled, actively implemented Dual Carbon Goals, and continued efforts in wind power. Photovoltaic and other renewable energy products doubled the new energy installation capacity to 395,000 kilowatts.
As a result, compared with the beginning of the year, approved capacity of thermal power increased by 50%. The Sunburst Energy Phase Five project, consisting of two 1-million-kilowatt high-efficiency clean coal-fired power generation plants. New construction delivered revenue of CNY 24.9 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 1.8%, and a profit of CNY 481 million, a year-on-year increase of 25% in the first half of 2023. We actively strengthened the application of new technologies and expanded marketing channels in response to new consumption trends, leading to continuous improvement in the performance in telecommunications, publishing, and the seed business. We also made significant strides in cooperation with an EV manufacturer.
CITIC Telecom International recorded revenue of HKD 5.3 billion and a profit of HKD 720 million, marking growth of 7% and a 26% year-on-year, respectively, both hitting record highs. Accelerated expansion of 5G business increased the market share by one point eight PP to 47.5% as compared to the end of 2022, by leveraging our first mover advantage in the 5G business to support Macau to usher in Digital Macau 3.0. Expanded planning of corporate business established the integrated cloud and network intelligence security ecosystems. In continuously expanded the network coverage capacity to cover about 160 countries.
CITIC Press recorded revenue of CNY 817 million, and a profit of CNY 90 million, representing a year-on-year increase of 2.9% and 1.4%, respectively, despite overall downturn in the book publishing market. Also, we have steady progress in market position, boosted market share by 0.48 PP year-on-year to 3.47% by actively engaging the reading, reading community and exploring own the channels for brand communications. Secured a top market share in the book publishing sector, ranked first in the market in the book categories of management and economics, tourist blog, and biographies, active promotion of technological transformations.
In the terms of Dah Chong Hong, realized revenue of CNY 19.3 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 5.3%, and a profit of CNY 36 million, a year-on-year decrease of 68%, attributable to decline the traditional vehicle consumption and auto market price war, resulting in a 10% year-on-year decrease in auto sales volume, increasing new car sales volume month-on-month. Through continuous promotion activities, new car sales have been increasing month-on-month since February, with a sales reaching 9,600 units in June and returning to normal levels. We also strengthened cooperation with the new NEV manufacturers, like, Li Auto and XPeng. The motor dealerships and after-sales services operations have commenced. CITIC Agriculture realized a significant year-on-year loss reduction of 32%, benefiting from the rising sales volume and the price of rice in the currency.
The Longping Hi-Tech, which has been actively cultivating scientific and technological innovation in the seed industry, had five high-yield and high-quality crop varieties selected as the leading agricultural varieties. New type of urbanization had a revenue decline to 10%, to CNY 16.1 billion, and profit increased by 2.3% to CNY 3 billion in the first half of 2023. We continued to improve the sell-through rate of newly initiated real estate projects to accelerate the return of funds and ensure the timely delivery of our property units. Property development and operation business are affected by the overall downturn in the market. The revenue and the profit amounted to 2.4 billion and two billion CNY respectively, a decline of 23% and 27% year on year.
New residential projects such as the Wuxi Jade Mansion and the Guangzhou Harbor City saw strong sales, leading to a 16% year-on-year increase in contracted sales. The sell-through rate of the Mangrove Bay project acquired from Kaisa Group has reached 81%, resulting in fund recovery of CNY 2.34 billion. The project is anticipated to be fully delivered by the end of the year. Solid operational performance of COLI amid challenging market conditions, China Overseas Land and Investment still showcased a relatively strong profitability, with a 19% year-on-year decline in net profit. In the first half of 2023, the collective entities of COLI achieved contracted sales of CNY 180.2 billion, bucking the trend with an impressive 30% year-on-year growth.
Construction of an operation impacted by cyclical factors related to project settlement. Revenue declined by 5.9% year-on-year to CNY 14.6 billion. Yet, the successful fund collection of key projects led to the reversal of provisions, resulting in the 2.9 times year-on-year increase in profit to CNY 1.1 billion. Steady progress of domestic projects deeply integrated into the national regional development strategy. All tunnels in Linqing Expressway project were completely connected. A smooth advancement international business operations, CITIC has been making smooth progress in key markets along the Belt and Road Initiative. Notable achievements include significant advancement in the 20,000-unit social housing project in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The successful inspection and completion of the subway project in Argentina. In the first half year, the company's various business operations developed steadily.
Our competitive advantages were strengthened and risk resilience was continuously enhanced. That's all for my introduction. Thank you.
Thank you, Madam Mao Yining, for the nice introduction. Now we will come to the Q&A session. The colleagues who join us online, please raise your hand. And also the colleagues you can press the button at the raise hand to raise your question. There will be the reminder from the telephone system to unmute yourself, so that you can ask your question. Please identify yourself, your name, and your affiliation before raising your question. Thank you. Now, we will invite the first question. Thank you, all the leaders, for the great opportunity to raise my question. Congratulations to CITIC for the good momentum in the performance. My name is Yao Zeyu, analyst from CICC. I have two questions. The first one is about international macroenvironment.
We know the U.S. Federal Reserve continued to increase the interest rate, which caused the global debt crisis and also the shortage in the overseas demand, and the global economy is also sluggish. What are the impacts and challenges to the operation of our business at CITIC? What are the countermeasures we have developed? The second question is the domestic macroeconomic environment. We know the economic growth is still very weak with very sluggish domestic demand. China has strengthened the micro adjustment policies, and also released a series of policies to make and promote economic recovery and development. What are the impact on the CITIC Limited from those policies from the government? First of all, thank you for the question. CICC is an outstanding company.
I read your report every term, and from your report, I can feel your evaluation of the domestic and overseas macroenvironment. So the first question is about the international macroenvironment. What are the challenges we are faced with? In facing those global macro challenges, we face a huge challenge because we are an international company, and we have many business and presence globally. But despite of the difficulties and challenges, our group are still very healthy and resilient to those challenges. In the first half year, we are also faced with the fluctuations of the bulk commodity prices, as well as geopolitical tensions. But overall, as a comprehensive group, we had effective countermeasures to those global challenges. For example, those countermeasures can be reflected in the financial figures from the General Manager of Financial Management Department.
For the next step, countermeasures, we will proceed from the following areas. The first one is that the three years pandemic, we have done an important thing, which is to control and prevent the risk to make our financial performance steady and healthy. We have the capability to respond to the challenges. We had a very healthy balance sheet. We had effective countermeasures to those small and medium-sized challenges and risks. That's a very positive news, and the feedback from the capital market is also very positive. The second one is that this foundation, our capability to respond to those challenges and also the capability on the comprehensive balance, is strengthened over the last couple of years. This is in large part attributable to the operation of CITIC Limited.
This can further strengthen our competitiveness in the market and make our group healthier than ever before. As a result, the competition can be strengthened in the market, and also we can have our overall value displayed against this backdrop. The third one is that during the difficult time for an outstanding company, there will be more opportunities to the outstanding and high-performing company. As for CITIC Limited, we can be better prepared in difficult time and seize on all the opportunities that comes by, and also the difficult period is also the opportunity to build a stronger company, stronger group. We have every confidence in doing so. The next one, that we aim to build an outstanding and high-performing group. In terms of the dual circulation, we will make more efforts.
We also want to show the comprehensive financial advantages as we serve the physical economies. The physical economy can be healthier than ever before, and in return, it's a solid foundation for the healthier future of the group. That's the answer to your first question. The policies released by the government; my comment is that the overall Chinese economy is turning for the better. That's for sure. The policy and the result from the policy takes time. We need to wait for the effect of the policy. For the business operation, it's a long-term process to see the final result and effect from the policy incentives of the government. So my overall comment is that government policy is in favor of the development and success for CITIC Limited.
If there is a positive prospect in capital market, then for the quality requirement of listed company, the requirement will be even higher than before. As for us, CITIC Limited, like CICC and also the financial holding, CITIC Securities, the valuation and the future development will be more resilient and promising, and will be more high-performing than ever before, because the quality bar has been raised from the positive capital market. For the traditional financial market, from our group perspective, for CITIC Limited, for the CITIC Trust, banks, insurance business, it will be helpful in the quality transformation.
Because we have the policies in place, and which will affect or to bring down the revenue at the period. But in the future, they actually can cover the downward trend of decline.
Therefore, we should because when we improve the quality, then the company is more healthy, and therefore, this is beneficial for the traditional financial business. Because sometimes we see that we see a decline of the revenue, but the provision is also declining, therefore, the profits will increase on the contrary. So this is my third and certainly we have introduced certain policies around consumption. This is also a positive signal for CITIC Limited, because we have the new consumption segment. As you know, we have altogether five segments, as you mentioned. The Dah Chong Hong, you see its sales.
And we should look more at, we should look more at its EVs, the NEVs, as well as the changes for the traditional automotive industry, and the changes in due to the Dual Carbon Goals. Later on, no matter for the real estate business or other businesses, which will be approved by the time today in Beijing. So we see some, we see the traffic congestion, because this is also a signal for the recovery, maybe of consumption. And e-commerce consumption is also important. There are other, like buildings and real estate is under pressure, but we will need some time to recover. And the fourth is about our industrial sector and manufacturing sector. Generally speaking, the manufacturing industry, as we are supporting the development of the manufacturing industry, no matter its input and output ratio is quite good.
We have seen this good result from the group. We see the, the dual growth of, the manufacturing sector. In manufacturing sector, which is also relevant with the service industry, like the supply chain and, industrial chain, and which are subjected to the changes of commodity market, which is affected by domestic market as well as the geopolitics in the world. We are faced with grave external challenges. Last year, oil price, we've experienced challenges in oil price and, mineral oil prices, and including iron ore prices, and we also experienced the interest hike by the United States. We see the decline of the consumption index. But overall, I think, CITIC Limited is performing very, healthily in the first half of this year, even though against the downward and, very sluggish, external environment.
Actually, we have achieved a revenue that is beyond our previous expectation. And I think our business is going to be healthier in the future. Next, let's invite the next question. I'm Jia Baichen with the China Securities Journal. I would like to congratulate on the achievement against the downward trend in the market. I would like to ask two questions. The first question is to for the introduction of policy of high quality system and for CITIC. I would like to know your order. So what are the opportunities brought by the new policy, and what are the work that has been implemented by CITIC Limited? And then just now, you mentioned that there is a double digit growth of revenue and the profit attributable to parent company.
So I would like to, talk, I want to invite this management to talk about what are the initiatives that is going to be taken. Thank you very much for your question. We believe to build a, valuation system with the Chinese characteristics is a long-term and fundamental work. So which means that it cannot be achieved overnight. For CITIC Limited, the, rectification of our valuation will also take some time. So we need to understand it in terms of the trend and its nature, so as for you to correctly understand the valuation of the company. And secondly, for CITIC. Firstly, it has brought us with a lot of attention. Analysts and investors visited CITIC, and we're organizing more frequent roadshows.
And now, investors, analysts have more comprehensive understanding of the fundamentals for its dividends, distribution, optimization of business, stable operation, safety of its liquidity. They have. It has demonstrated a high value for investment, so we have seen the recovery of our valuation. But what is the pity, is that the market value capitalization is actually heavily deviated from our own evaluation. We have done the following work. Firstly, is the communication with the capital market. We have organized more domestic roadshows, and in the latter half of the year, we are going to organize roadshows in the overseas markets as is needed. The second, about dividend. We pay much attention to the reasonable return to investors, and our dividend policy will maintain continuity and stability to share the dividend with our shareholders.
Thirdly, about evaluation. Evaluation and assessment system, we follow the requirements for science-based sustainability and system evaluation to expand the scope of evaluation, and to optimize the setting up of the indicators for optimized evaluation, so as to strengthen the evaluation management. Firstly, it's about the salary incentives. We remain committed to market development and to retain the high-quality talents, so that we can build a high-quality, proactive, and high-level talent team. The fifth is about wealth management. Since the founding of CITIC Financial Holding, we have been improving our wealth management system, enhance visualization foundation, in catalyze the potential of comprehensive financial services to improve the synergistic for development. So as to do a good job in information disclosure, my sixth point is about the high quality development of bank, of CITIC Bank.
As Heying is also here, he's going to talk about that in more details. But I can say that we are committed to supporting the banking sector for its positive and high-quality development. I would like to take this opportunity to share with you that for the 14th Five- Year Plan, as for our targets for 10, 100, 1,000, and 10,000, as of the end of 2022, CITIC Group has total assets of over CNY 10 trillion, with a net profit of over CNY 100 billion. CITIC ranked 100th among the Fortune 500, published this August. So we have achieved these first three targets, as among those we set up for the 14th Five -Year Plan. So we believe.
So, which has reflected that we are committed to our promises, and we are going to continue to work together to overcome the difficulties ahead, and join forces to achieve to deepen reform and the professional integration of business. Every year, we try to have an IPO of one of our companies, and at the same time, we are going to accelerate the digital transformation to improve the synergistic development of the whole company, and to consolidate our advantage in the industries, so as to achieve our goal of... And I hope that the investors will stay tuned to the further development of CITIC. And we will continue to communicate with all the investors, to share the investment value of CITIC. Thank you for the question.
Just now, you mentioned how we will support the development of CITIC Bank. For CITIC Bank, which has experienced changes that is quite healthy and positive. We will remain committed to provide more support to CITIC Bank. Due to the changes happened over the past few years, we will continue to consolidate the position of CITIC Bank in the group, as it contributed a lot to the group. Second, we will continue to support CITIC Bank to have a comeback among the top of joint stock of commercial banks in China. I used to work for other commercial banks in China. We are a joint stock company like China Merchants Bank, Minsheng Bank, Ping An Bank, Everbright Bank, and et cetera.
We hope that we can come back at the top among those joint stock commercial bank. So that we will live up to our reputation. According to the comparable basis, we are very close to top two. Therefore, we are very confident to come back to the top, among the top. And in addition to the expansion of the size, is, business quantity, we will continue to work on our revenue control of risks, as well as to address the changes happened in the market to come back to the top as a joint stock commercial bank.
The third is that CITIC Limited and CITIC Group will fully support to make CITIC Bank demonstrate new vitality and to form new competitive advantage, to be a really respected quality bank, high quality bank, so that it can live up to its name as a CITIC Bank. We see substantial internal and healthy changes to CITIC Bank, and we should express more high expectations to CITIC Bank. As you asked, what should CITIC Bank do? What should CITIC Limited do to support CITIC Bank? The first is the stability of the management team, which has shown our commitment to the support of the development of CITIC Bank. So we have a professional and very stable management team, which is trustworthy. Now we have...
So we see that we have more support as we see the governor of the bank is becoming the general manager. So firstly, we should look at whether we have a stable management team. As we say, it is a substantial internal, healthy changes.
So from the management team perspective, we need to look at and rely on the stability of the team. Number two, for the bank to be healthy and to be more competitive in the market, where is the source of capital? For CITIC Bank, in terms of core capital, we are different from other banks. What should we do? We need to support the group. We have comprehensive measures. ROI, ROE are very high. Why not making more investment? Since the bank is asset short, why not making more investment? It's a good gesture to return to the society and our employees. This is the second. Number three, we are a comprehensive group in banks sector.
How to utilize the comprehensive group to contribute further to the bank's development, especially in terms of the risk control from the tools we developed, so we can better prevent and reduce the tools. I dare say that CITIC Bank is very competitive in the market. Our deputy financial general manager mentioned Mangrove Bay project. Where is it from? Is it a way to improve the quality in financial sector. We have dissolved the risk, so that they will not become a provision, and have a very good collection of the capital. That's a very unique achievement. So in terms of dissolving risks, we have a clear advantage, and dissolving risk in our company is very compliant. It's relying on the Gobit's tools from our professional capabilities. From our evaluation of the industry, we can better resolve the risks.
As a result, our CITIC Bank can be healthier and more competitive. Number four, we have a coordinated strength through our group, through the CITIC Limited. The friend circle can be fully expanded. The products are more... A better modular, modularized, and our product can enhance the adhesion with the customer, so that we can grow up together, have a better growth, especially CITIC Financial Holdings. It's been one year since the operation, and CITIC Financial Holdings is a very important asset management company. Safety and security is the top priority. I believe it's a better way to empower our customers and empower the growth of the bank. So we're confident of the bank's business.
If the operations of the bank is good, the foundation of the CITIC Limited will be more solid, then, the contribution to other physical business will be stronger. So in terms of investment for input and output, input is much less than output. Sometimes we have 1% of input, the output will be ten times bigger. So for CITIC Bank, we focus on the high quality operation.... For CITIC Bank, the manager of the bank is also here. You can have your own comment and evaluation of the performance there. Now, let's invite the next question. All leaders, good afternoon. I'm very honored to take part in this, half-year results briefing. I'm Wang Xiaoqiao from, Tokyo Marine. I'm very happy to have the opportunity to take part in this, briefing.
First of all, I want to congratulate CITIC Limited for the outstanding performance in the first half year. As for CITIC Limited, long-term development of financial segment is what we are interested in. So this time we have two questions to CITIC Bank. The first question is that we want to understand about the operational performance in the first half of 2023, and what is your vision for the whole year operational performance in 2023? The second question is the risk the market is very focused on, which is the breach of the municipal investment fund. So we want to ask CITIC Bank about the current risk exposure of the municipal investment fund. What about the asset quality? Thank you for the question.
I remember at the beginning of the year, when we had the results briefing, you asked a similar question. It means you really focused on the business growth of CITIC Bank. Also, thank you, the question from China Securities Journal. Your question raised to CITIC Group. But I saw, and for the first time, I heard our chairman recognize the achievement of CITIC Bank. That's a big encouragement to us. The answer from the chairman conveyed a very positive signal for the long term and a growing support to CITIC Bank. That's a very positive signal to us. Over the last couple of years, CITIC Bank had very good development. So we had good performance and results at the CITIC Bank, but the contributor is CITIC Group.
In the first half year, we focused on four operational themes to stabilize the interest spread, expand the quality and customers. We are having very positive transformation. The main operational indicators are very good, and let me put it this way, we had a very comprehensive improvement from the financial performance. Just now, General Manager Yining has released the financial performance. She mentioned we had continued growth of the performance. Revenue declined by 2.2%, but compared to the shareholding bank limited, we are better. The profit growth of 4.9% compared to the industry, we're much better than them. Also, we noticed that the capital efficiency is improving. ROA improved by 0.04%. ROE improved by 0.03%.
On top of that, I want to highlight, as our chairman introduced, one thing worth mentioning is that in the first half year, without any complement of external capital, we have very good core capital rate. It showed that the capital supply and complementary can meet the growth need of the company. In the past, it was impossible. It also showed the light asset operational model is further consolidated. In terms of quality, we are in constant optimization of the quality. We had a decline of NPL, as was mentioned earlier. Also, the provision coverage rate increased by 7.09 percentage to 208%. From the business foundation perspective, in the first half year, our business foundation is further solidified. Number one, we have the very balanced management measure.
The government guides the decline of interest rate, but for CITIC Bank, we are offsetting and hedging the decline of interest rate. The cost rate declined by 6 basis points in the first half year, compared year-on-year, which alleviated the negative impact from the declining revenue. Also, for the liability cost ratio, we are declining, but others are increasing. This achievement reflected a strong support to the operation, also reflected the efficient liability management. All the business line are improving their capability to further development. Our core capability is also strengthened. Over the last couple of years, we attached a great importance to strong core capability to construct, the value circulation chain to lead the development. The asset under management is 4.33 trillion CNY, growing by 5.4% compared to the beginning of the year.
Also, the asset management business in banks is affected by the market fluctuations. All the size overall shrank by 8.4% compared to the beginning of the year, but our subsidiary had a very positive growth. We ranked number 3 in the entire banks market, including the big banks' overall financing size. We had 12.55 trillion CNY of the comprehensive financing scale. We continue to cement the customer bases. In terms of retail business, we have the customer development strategy. We also focus on integrated operation of the same category of our customer, and the corporate customer has doubled the number of last year. The retail high-end customers also maintained the growing momentum. The VIP customers increased by 90,000 compared to the beginning of the year.
The private bank customer increased by 4,000 compared to the beginning of the year. Number 4, we seek to stable and healthy development strategy to further explore the value in risk management. In the first half year, we continued to optimize the risk management structure. We have promoted the five strategy in one principle to accelerate the disposal of the risks and improve the overall capability in risk management. In the first half year, the newly added non-performing rate declined to 1.48%. Also, more importantly, as Chairman Zhu introduced, we are healthier in the balance sheet, and also the asset is further optimized. In the second half year, we still face a lot of challenges.
For example, the demand of the loans and the pressure on the release of the loans, as well as the reconsolidation of the loans from the government platform, et cetera. There will be various impact here and there, but we are confident in maintaining the good growing momentum in the first half year to maintain a steady and a growing business. The next topic is about the municipal investment bond bridge. I will answer from two aspects. The first one is we need to look at the current situation.
As for the local liability, which is controllable and stable, and over the past few years, the banks are alleviating the risks of the liabilities, and we see that the risks are controllable and stabilized. By the end of June, we've seen a continuous decline of the hidden loans. We say that the loan balance is still not high and the structure is good. So just now, you asked about urban development loans. Speaking of the loan, so we have the revitalization type loan, hidden loan, and the non-hidden loan, and the platform loan. So it's very difficult to compare them, and the disclosure is quite also varies, which can lead to misconceptions.
But I can say that the balance is not high, and the structure of the loans is good, is relatively good, because the 70% is in South China, East China, and Central China. And for provincial and city-level platforms account for 55%. And for those belonging to the county level, 80% of them is, are concentrated in East China. For government credit business, we have provided a very relatively high provision, which is higher than the average. In looking into the future, a package of macro policies has been introduced by the state to provide a solid foundation to alleviate the local debt risks. Compared than before, we will continue to control the new increase of loans, and it is emphasized — it was emphasized at the Central Political Bureau meeting in July.
We have read the instructions from the meeting, especially the keywords of implementation of the package of debt disposal plan. We learned that for different localities, it has been moving from the development of policies to implementation of those policies. And so this has not been restricted to the local government debt, and it has been mentioned as the local debt risk. So the scope has been expanded, and we have seen that we have seen the determination from the top leadership of the government to alleviate the debt risks. And it is now moving into the stage of practical implementation. The risks for urban development loans for CITIC Bank has been greatly alleviated. We have estimated the impact is limited.
We will continue to manage the costs, and to enhance our management of the loans and the cost together. With the favorable policies of Banc assurance, we are able to hedge the risks. So let's move to online analysts and, investors, so you can rarely hear from to here, from online. Peter Yang with Goldman Sachs. Dear management, I'd like to thank management for giving me this opportunity, and I would like to congratulate on the results for the first half of the year. I have two questions, one about technological innovation. We see the management attaches great importance to the investment into innovation. This July, CITIC also attended the World AI Congress held in Shanghai. So I would like to ask about the plans of CITIC in AI, AIGC, blockchain, and other cutting-edge technologies.
My second question is about the CITIC Financial Holding. As we see over the past more than one year since the establishment of CITIC Financial Control, wealth management has been set up as a core competitiveness of financial holdings. So what is the current progress or result, and how, and how it will show the added value brought by CITIC Financial Holding? I'm Wang Guoquan, Deputy General Manager. I would like to answer your first question. The company has always attached great importance to technical or technological innovation. In the 14th Five-Year Plan, we have proposed to build a world-class technology-based company. And over the years, we have been improving our mechanism, enhance our investment, and to reinforcing to cooperation. The growth rate of investment is close to 23% for the R&D investment.
The intensity will be higher than 3%, 3 percentage points. In terms of the system, accumulatively, we built national-level 10 national-level R&D platforms and 117 provincial-level platforms. We have established a Science and Technology Association, which is under the leadership of Mr. Xu Zuo. The association is also organizing collaboration and exchanges of Science and Technology at home and abroad. So here, I'm not going to dive into more details. Just now, the question, your question is focused on visualizing intelligent development. In this area, we are committed to improve our capacity, our deployment in this area. There are three keywords that can be used to answer your question. The first keyword is good endowment.
CITIC Group is endowed with good and high-quality resources for digitalization, as we have been devoted to this for years. At different occasions, I've reported that we have five pillars: the cloud, network, satellite, scenarios, and ecosystem for digitalization and intelligence. CITIC Cloud, which is a hybrid cloud, which has been cooperated into our infrastructure, which is safe, smart and the cloud-based platform, which can be used to satisfy the demand of the group for digitalization, and which can also be exported. For CITIC Network and the CITIC International Telecom, both of them have the licenses needed to provide telecom services. As I believe you are familiar with the satellite, which has provided services to different industries, including emergency response, disaster relief, and etc., which enjoys a good reputation in the industry.
Speaking of the scenario, we have—as the company covers 60 sectors with abundant and scenarios and massive amounts of data, those are the high-value assets of the company. When it comes to the ecosystem, representing the circle of friends of CITIC, we are working with outstanding partners from various industries, which can help us to amplify and further improve our capability in digitalized and intelligent development. Therefore, in the era of digitalization and intelligence, the above are the great potential of our company. Like, Chang Chairman said, "We are bold enough to say that the—we are incomparable." Those are the massive amount of assets outside the balance sheet. The present valuation model is not able to reflect the real valuation of CITIC. So I hope that you can attach—give more attention to our valuation.
What you look at are those showing in this building, on our balance sheet. I hope that you can also look at our assets deployed on the cloud. The second keyword is the great number of achievements. As you mentioned, in July, the group attended the World AI Congress held in Shanghai. This is the second time for CITIC to attend the congress, widely covered by the media. The five business segments brought cutting-edge tech achievements to the congress. So we can say we have a large number of cutting-edge achievements, but we are also putting our management on cloud, achieving positive results. For example, our financial business, for example, smart risk management, risk management, investment management, which are leading and outperforming our peers in the industry.
Our Wealth Plaza and the other scenarios for the application for Fintech has been up, and we are diving deeper into finance, trust, and other and insurance services and etc., as we own a number of financial licenses, which can help us to amplify our capabilities in the non-financial segment. Like, CITIC Pacific Special Steel has built the first whole process internet platform for seamless steel product. We are now at the forefront of the application of the cutting-edge technology. Every steel pipe will be printed like 2,200 labels with 20,000 entries of data. At the same time, we can differentiate the 20,000 entries of data.
They can be customized for each steel pipe, which has greatly improved the quality of the product, the efficiency of production, as well as, customized delivery capability. I hope you can take some time to visit our company to look at, these achievements with me. The third keyword is early deployment in the market. As you mentioned about AIGC, the generative AI, blockchain, are among the, hot technologies in the market. We are committed to three principles. The first is open collaboration. We adopt an open mind to work with the leading platforms and enterprises at home and abroad. We open up our scenarios for cooperation to make explorations jointly. The second principle is to give full play to our own advantage.
We rely on our advantage in financial, non-financial businesses to build our own vertical platforms. We have the four plus X mechanism. The four directions are smart R&D to accumulate capabilities for our business. Second, risk management. Third, content generation. Please stay tuned to CITIC Press. Over the past few years, it has developed its outstanding capability for content generation. That's the next one is like machine vision and the advanced technological capabilities. We have established the AI laboratory in machine vision. So this is the second principle. The third is enablement by financial segment. We are an innovation-driven company.
We are working with our partners to support the development of the high-level precision and cutting-edge industries, and to enable and to empower the digitalized development of our country. Thank you.
I will answer the question about financial control. Financial control, financial holding, is the first batch of financial holding company. A lot of work are still under the process of exploration. On the one hand, we focus on risk prevention control. At the same time, asset management is taken as the core competitiveness to cultivate. In terms of risk prevention and control, since the establishment of CITIC Financial Holding, there are three good result. The first one is the very clear mapping of the potential risks through digital management. Number 2 is the concentrated risk control had yielded great result. And in terms of concentrated customers and risk control, we have great result. Number 3 is the capability to dissolve risks, which have been strengthened. Obviously, we have formulated a risk prevention, control, and early warning closed loop management system.
In terms of asset management, wealth management, there are several aspects to share. Number one is the top layer design yielded a great result. According to one center, one customer concept, we formulated Wealth Management 13-14 development plan. And also, we have established the CITIC Wealth Plaza, with great feedback of the customer. In terms of digital empowerment, it's under active construction. CITIC Bank, CITIC Securities, as well as the CITIC Prudential, all the customers can empower each other and divert the traffic among each other. That's a great achievement. For the future of financial technologies, which is even more obvious than ever before, the influence of financial holding is on the rise. Two examples: In March, in Suzhou, we organized the Wealth Manager Conference.
At that conference, 26 institutions, funds management organizations, accounting for 60% of the size of funds in China. The size of the management totaled CNY 16 trillion. This reflected the impact and influence of CITIC Financial Holding in the market. Also, in Shenzhen, we have organized the Entrepreneur Summit. More than 200 entrepreneurs attended that summit in Shenzhen, which has become a very important communication and collaboration platform for startups. With the support of Shenzhen Municipal Government, we continue to explain to entrepreneurs about the update of our effort and business. All these are the reflection of the influence and the power to advocate in the market. Number three is the scale of the business, which had a steady growth. Individual customers reached seven trillion, 6% higher than the beginning of the year, and corporate customers increased by 16.2%.
Comprehensive financing scale raised CNY 16.4 trillion , with a growth of 2.6% year-on-year. Individual customer quantity yielded 164 million, 7.3% growth compared to the beginning of the year. These are very outstanding performance and success. For the next step, we will focus on the following four aspects. Number one is the mechanism construction. We will continue to solidify the wealth committee, one plus three plus five mechanism, establishing five dedicated working group to promote asset management, pension management, annuity, special asset management, brand building, among other key working areas. Number two is to strengthen customer cluster management, we will continue to deepen N plus one plus one strategy. We have established the CITIC Huawei Commercial Joint Innovation Center, which had entered into business already.
We will also build a CITIC Entrepreneur Office to deepen the relationship with entrepreneur customers. The third area is the product innovation. We established the CITIC Great Product selection evaluation system. Currently, CITIC Great Products had a sales of CNY 50 billion, demonstrating strong market competition and influence, and it has become a very important trendsetter in industry. Number four is to establish the platform. For CITIC, we will develop the new products and the platform ourselves, involving green development, the consumption essential, involving four themes. We will launch the CITIC innovated products. Number four is to accelerate the platform construction. We are in the process of constructing the integrated account, data management, application development, operation sharing, as well as ecological opening capabilities to further improve the efficiency, reducing the cost, and optimize the service. Thank you.
Let's invite the last two questions from the online colleagues. Let's invite George Tai from Citi. Good afternoon, all the management team. Thank you for the timing, and thank you for the question. I will have two questions. The first one is that in the current financial industry, with the big backdrop of economic downturn and restrictions on the remuneration policy, how to set up the reasonable remuneration incentive mechanism? Number two is, CITIC Limited had a strong risk resilience, and in recent couple of years, you are committed to the improvement of dividend level, and what is the vision and plan for the future dividend distribution? Thank you very much for the question. I will take the first question. On the remuneration incentive policy, I will answer the question from four aspects to introduce the remuneration incentive mechanism at CITIC Limited.
First of all, we will stick to the market orientation. So the industry benchmarking and benchmarking between remuneration and performance to conduct the very competitive remuneration comparative analysis. Also, we will calculate the base for overall salary and using the market proposition of the subsidiary to pair with the remuneration mechanism. We need to, first of all, increase the efficiency in order to increase the remuneration. Number two, we will be performance-oriented. The overall salary of the subsidiary and it, its economic efficiency, performance evaluation will be linked closely together. We will make sure the flexibility of the overall salary system, and we want to feel free to increase and decrease the salary. The happiness, it can only be worked for.
In terms of the salary of the employees, we are more inclined to the frontline and grassroots employees and support the, the flexible and customized salary mechanism. For example, we want to provide market-recognized and competitive remuneration incentive. Those who have skills and contributions can make more money. Number four is about the leadership remuneration aspect. We will take into full account the operational performance of the subsidiary, performance evaluation result, among other factors, to provide the most competitive remuneration system in the industry. In a whole, for the remuneration incentive system, we can make sure all employees can work happily here and receive happy remuneration and salary. As for dividend, CITIC Limited follow the market-oriented and sustainable dividend policy since we were listed in the stock exchange.
The growth of the overall dividend is 16.7%, 3.5 percentage points higher and faster than the net profit. We had maintained 25% of the dividend rate over the last four consecutive years, and the dividend. The average share interest rate is 8.2% over the last three years, which is very high already. This morning, we had a board of directors meeting, and we suggested for the distribution of share interest is CNY 0.18 per share. The total dividend is CNY 5.236 billion , and it's a very solid foundation for the stability of the level of shareholder dividend distribution. Interest rate, the rate maintained a very stable pace.
We are also considering the cash flow, the overall profitability, and the long-term development demand need, as well as the dividend distribution in the same industry. These are the factors we take into account to map out the stable dividend distribution level that is sustainable into the long-term future, to make sure the reasonable returns of all the investors. Thank you. In the interest of time, we will close out the QA session. Thank you all for your participation in today's meeting. The journey ahead is still long and bumpy, but we will overcome all the challenges and difficulties to enter into a more prosperous future. We will be more steadfast, take a step at a time to stick to the high-quality performance, and contribute further to the society and to our country. We will also provide better service to all the media friends and investors.
That will be all for the 2023 half-year results briefing. Thank you.