Agricultural Bank of China (ABC) reported Sunday that its net profit increased 17.5 percent to 51.45 billion yuan (7.54 billion U.S. dollars) in 2008 over the previous year.

Business revenue totaled 211.19 billion yuan last year, up 17.8 percent year on year. Net interest income rose 23.1 percent to 193.85 billion yuan, according to ABC's first audited annual report.

The report was the first after the State Council, China's Cabinet, approved the bank's shareholding transformation plan in October 2008.

The bank's core capital adequacy ratio reached 8.04 percent. The non-performing loan ratio was 4.3 percent at the end of 2008, down 19.3 percentage points from the end of 2007.

At the end of 2008, the bank's total assets exceeded 7.01 trillion yuan, up 32.2 percent from a year ago.

Deposit reached about 6.1 trillion yuan at the of 2008, up 15.3 percent from a year earlier.

The lender gave more than 3.01 trillion yuan of loans by the end of 2008, up 11.3 percent from the end of 2007. Of the total amount, 766.7 billion yuan was agriculture-related loans.

ABC, the main financial service provider for farmers and agriculture in China, aimed to give more support to rural areas since its shareholding reform.

The state-owned bank became a shareholding company in January, the last of the "big four" state-owned commercial banks to complete the restructuring.

(Xinhua News Agency April 27, 2009)