The Agricultural Bank of China (ABC) saw a sharp rise in individual housing loans in 2000, with the total outstanding amount of such loans hitting 40.8 billion yuan, 3.5 percent of ABC’s total assets.
The bank has increased a total of 25.3 billion yuan in housing loans throughout 2000, up 165 percent from 1999 and 5.3 billion more than the annual target.
The outstanding amount of housing loans at the Guangdong branch of the ABC totaled 9.9 billion yuan alone, while eight other ABC branches saw their annual lending of housing loans increasing by more than one billion yuan from the previous year.
A spokesman for the bank said that so far the bank has introduced a dozen ways to give out loans and seven ways for their clients to repay them, making it more convenient for individual house purchasers.
The housing loans maintain fairly good quality and the lending structure of the bank significantly improved as a result of it, the spokesman noted.
He said that non-performing assets account for merely 0.8 percent of all ABC’s housing loans while the default rate remained as low as 0.04 percent.
(Xinhua 01/19/2001)
