The Agricultural Bank of China (ABC), the country's last major state-owned commercial bank still to list on the stock market, has reported a 66 percent increase in operating profit in the first nine months over the same period last year.

From January to September, the bank's operating profit rose to 70.6 billion yuan (US$9.43 billion), exceeding its full-year target, said the bank in a statement.

The sharp profit growth was attributed to soaring revenues from intermediary business, which rose by 60 percent. The growth rate was 14.7 percentage points higher than for the same period of last year.

The statement did not reveal the bank's non-performing loan ratio at the end of September. The bank said in August the ratio dropped by 2.09 percentage points in the first six months from 23.43 percent at the end of 2006.

The high bad loan ratio is a major obstacle to the ABC's ambition to list on the stock market.

The other three banks - the Bank of China, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and China Construction Bank, had all completed their reforms and gone public by October last year.

The bank is going through a financial restructuring before an initial public offering. The government is auditing the bank's financial record to guide decisions on how state investment is needed.

Central Huijin, China's state-owned investment company, was planning to inject 40 billion U.S. dollars into the bank to raise its capital adequacy ratio to eight percent, the required ratio for commercial banks in China.