Agricultural Bank of China Vice President Yang Kun said the bank is gearing up to complete its bail-out this year.

"It is likely for the bank to see the bail-out, restructuring and setting into the initial public offering procedure this year," Yang said yesterday in Shanghai on the 20-year ceremony of its Shanghai branch's foray into cities.

The bank's President Xiang Junbo said earlier this month that the bank was ready for share reform.

The Beijing-based bank is the last among the country's big four state-owned lenders to reform.

China has spent about 500 billion U. S. dollars bailing out its biggest lenders over the past decade. The three largest - Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd, Bank of China Ltd and China Construction Bank Corp - raised a combined 53 billion dollars by selling shares over the past two years. ABC's restructuring has been delayed because 23 percent of its loans aren't getting paid, its annual report said.

ABC and China Development Bank will get 67 billion dollars from the nation's sovereign wealth fund, Vice Finance Minister Li Yong said last month. ABC, which holds 12 percent of China's 4.7 trillion dollars of banking assets, has the worst asset quality and most employees of the big four state-owned lenders.

China is reorganizing state-owned lenders and policy banks and pushing them to go public so that international accounting, disclosure and capital adequacy rules can improve their governance.

The bank's operating profit rose 71 percent year-on-year in the first quarter to 14.1 billion yuan (2.01 billion dollars).

The non-performing loan ratio fell by 1.14 percentage points from 23.64 percent at the end of last year, with the total amount of bad loans dropping 7.3 billion yuan in the first quarter from the end of last year.

(Shanghai Daily May 17, 2008)