BEIJING, Aug. 24 (Xinhua) -- Chinese share prices closed slightly higher on the last trading day of this week with major index kept above the 5,000-point mark.

    The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index went up 1.49 percent or 75.18 points to close at 5,107.67 points on a transaction volume of 167.55 billion yuan (22.05 billion U.S. dollars).

    The Shenzhen Component Index on the smaller Shenzhen stock market rose 1.28 percent or 225.46 points to close at 17,864.68 points on a business turnover of 88.40 billion yuan (11.63 billion U.S. dollars).

    The combined turnover of the two bourses expanded to around 255.95 billion yuan ( 33.68 billion U.S. dollars) from 244.8 billion yuan on Thursday. The major index moved between 5,125.36 points and 5,052.24 points.

    The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and Bank of China opened higher on satisfactory first half net profits and then dropped to 6.99 yuan and 6.16 yuan respectively at closing. The Industrial Bank Co. Ltd. rose to the daily upside limit of 10 percent.

    Sinopec was up 1.51 percent. China Life Insurance and Ping An of China rose 1.94 percent and 4.65 percent. Aluminum Corp. of China climbed 5.16 percent and the Bao Steel Group went up 6.27 percent.

    Institutional investors are confident of future gains as they continue to snap up blue chips, said dealers.

    China's major lenders on Thursday reported they had suffered no or only minor losses from their investment in U.S. mortgage-backed securities.

    In a report released Friday, ratings agency Standard & Poor's said Asian economies would be able to weather the turmoil in global stock and credit markets without "major reversals."

    Chinese share prices on Thursday breached the 5,000-point mark for the first time since China established stock market 18 years ago.

    After jumping about 130 percent in 2006, the index has surged around 85 percent so far this year despite four rate hikes and a slew of other measures to cool the market.

    China's stock market entered a five-year bearish round in 2001, due to poor performance of listed companies, irregularities of securities firms and problems with the market system design. The major index fell to 998 points on June 6, 2005.

    At present, the market value of the two bourses, with more than 100 million accounts so far, has exceeded China's gross domestic product and reached 22 trillion yuan.