Chengdu First Village Bank Starts Operation
Posted:2008-1-4|Source:internet|No. of Views:
CHENGDU, Jan 03, 2008 (SinoCast China Financial Watch via COMTEX) -- VBKC | charts | news | PowerRating -- The first village bank in southwest China's Chengdu City recently commenced operation with registered capital of CNY 50 million.
The village bank mainly provides various banking services for peasants, the development of agriculture and rural economy.
As planned, it will take in deposits of CNY 200 million and grant loans of CNY 138 million to individual and corporate customers in 2008, said Cai Guocheng, board chairman of the newborn village bank.
Notably, HSBC, a top foreign bank in China, also formally opened the country's first foreign village bank in the central province Hubei on December 13, 2007.
With local regulatory approval, the British lender located its village bank in Zengdu District, Suizhou, Hubei Province, Central China.
With registered capital of CNY 10 million and 22 employees, the newborn will initially provide deposit service to both individual and corporate customers, finance service to the agriculture-related enterprises, as well as trade and settlement services to export-oriented companies.
In fact, HSBC had been permitted to prepare such a rural bank as early as August 2007. It is now still having a try on operating village banks in China, according to Vincent Cheng, chairman of HSBC.
In the future when more experience is gathered, the new bank will directly offer loans to Chinese peasants or provide such service in partnership with local rural credit cooperatives or other rural financial institutions.
As for risk control, the foreign village bank will adopt HSBC's risk control system while also working out relevant standards on cash flow, operating mode and repayment especially applicable to local peasants.
Notably, the new bank has nothing to do with HSBC Bank (China) Company Limited, which had been opened in April 2007 as HSBC's legal-person subsidiary in China.
With deepened reform in China's rural financial sector, more provinces have been picked up to operate village banks on a trial basis.
The country's first village had been opened in March 2007 in Nanchong, a second-tier city in the developing southwestern province of Sichuan.
Initiated by Nanchong City Commercial Bank, the small village bank has a registered capital of CNY 2 million.
It provides small-sum loans to farmers, with the maximum credit line limited at CNY 20 thousand.
Besides, Anhui, a developing province in central China, was selected to set up two village-level banks under branch banking system on a trial basis. They are to be located in Changfeng County and Fengyang County respectively, according to early reports.
