The Agricultural Bank of China, one of the country's four biggest State-owned commercial banks, reported a total profit of 7.93 billion yuan (US$967 million) for the first half of this year, the bank announced here on Thursday.
Yang Mingsheng, vice-president of the bank, said the profit represents an increase of 4.4 billion yuan (US$536 million) over the corresponding period last year.
Addressing the bank's work conference on Thursday, Yang said, at the end of June, the bank's outstanding deposits stood at 340.8billion yuan (US$41.5 billion), exceeding the bank's annual target by 4.8 percent.
Its outstanding loans rose by 261 billion yuan (US$31.8 billion) from the beginning of this year, said Yang.
Yang said the bank's non-performing loan rate decreased by 3.53percentage points from the beginning of this year.
(China Daily July 18, 2003)
