Is PreparedStatement reused on insert?

[Kenji Nakamura]

Hi,

I'm evaluating iBatis 2.1.7, and encountered a performance problem.  
The benchmark is simply taking a sequential file with approximately  
16,000 lines, and populate them into HSQLDB (1.8.0.1) with 20 lines  
of batch. I see iBatis version is two to three times slower than  
plain vanilla JDBC version.
I put a profiler, and it indicates  
com.ibatis.sqlmap.engine.execution.SqlExecutor#excuteUpdate() creates  
an instance of PreparedStatement every time calling  
SqlMapClient#insert(), and it is actually created at line 77 of the  
method.
Is there a way to keep an instance of PreparedStatement for an Id and  
reuse it? At least creation of PreparedStatement isn't a cheap  
operation in HSQLDB, which takes up 51% of whole execution time in my  
benchmark.

Thanks in advance,

Kenji