Governor of PBOC Stresses Solving Difficulties in Loans to FarmersThe People's Bank of China (PBOC) recently held a working conference on rural credit cooperatives rendering service in support of agriculture, Dai Xianglong, governor of PBOC, made a speech at the meeting.As reported, the past 50 years have seen a swift development of the businesses of country credit cooperatives (hereinafter referred to as "cooperatives"). By the end of last April, the total deposit balance of "cooperatives" hit 1.58 trillion yuan, accounting for 12 percent of that of all the financial institutions, while the gross loan balance of them reached 1.05 trillion yuan, taking up 10 percent of China's total, with 65.5 percent gone to agriculture. Dai Xianglong noted that "cooperatives" should regard the solution of difficulties in loans to farmers as the current central task and efforts should be concentrated on successfully solving the problem. He stressed that "cooperatives" should strengthen management, increase income and cut expenditure, and by 2005, the rate of bad loans should be kept below 20 percent and most of them should have by and large turned deficit into profit. A management system of "cooperatives" adaptable to the rural economic development should be established. During the "10th Five-year Plan" period, most "cooperatives" will be transformed into cooperative financial organizations serving cooperative members who hold shares and exercise democratic management, said Dai. He also disclosed that "cooperatives" of China would soon launch an activity to rectify rural financial market order. A series of strict prohibitions will be enforced, such as designating shopping units, deducting interest while granting loans, providing goods as loans, and granting loans to local governments for advance payment of salary or outlay. By PD Online staff member Deng Gang |
| People's Daily Online --- http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/ |