Agricultural Bank of China expands farming finance service

Agricultural Bank of China Ltd will expand its farming finance policy to all of its county branches to better serve rural businesses.

As China's fourth largest lender by assets, Agricultural Bank launched a special service for rural communities in 2008. It now covers sub-branches in 19 provinces or 72 percent of the bank's county-level outlets.

"A total of 2,089 sub-branches nationwide will be covered by the (policy), Feng Yancheng, general manager of the bank's Rural Personal Credit Division of the farming-related Personal Banking Department, said.

"The (policy) will ensure the establishment of a specialized department at major levels of the bank with specialized staff to serve agro-related business."

By the end of March, the outstanding loans at the county level of the 20 pilot branches reached 2.35 trillion yuan ($367 billion), up 124 percent before the service was launched. The growth was 27.4 percentage points higher than that of the bank's outstanding loans during the same period.