As Beijing counts down to the 2008 Olympic Games, a leading insurance regulator yesterday said the event can count on proper insurance services.

"Chinese and foreign insurers and reinsurers, plus insurance intermediates, are sparing no efforts to provide plans for the Games," Yuan Li, spokesman of the China Insurance Regulatory Commission (CIRC), told a press conference held by the State Council Information Office.

The commission attached great importance to using insurance to cover risks of the Games, and has set up a co-ordinating body with the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad (BOCOG), said Yuan, also an assistant chairman of the CIRC.

"Olympic Games insurance is an international practice and a systematic project, which involves property, liability and people," Yuan said. "We believe these insurance services can safeguard (the running of) the 2008 Games. "

The official did not specify which insurers are involved, or what kind of risks will be insured against.

Historically, risks at Olympic Games involve venues and apparatus, cancellation of events, and personal injury or property damage to participants or spectators.

Also speaking at yesterday's press conference, Li Kemu, vice-chairman of the CIRC, said China will soon issue interim rules on management of overseas investment of its cash-rich insurers.

" The CIRC has consulted with the State Administration for Foreign Exchange many times, and we are drafting interim provisions which will be promulgated in the near future," he said.

Lack of investment channels has caused China's insurers' funds to be diverted only to some short-term projects, the vice-chairman said.

Total assets of the country's insurance industry are currently valued at 1.8 trillion yuan (US$225 billion), 2.6 times as much as in 2002. Its annual premium income has grown 8 percentage points higher than the world average three years in a row, according to commission statistics.

Editor: Donald