OREANDA-NEWS. April 22, 2013. It’s reported that in the past two years, Agricultural Bank of China Limited (ABC) set up a total of 143 new outlets, 96 of which were located in Central and Western China, accounting for 67% of the total.

While further upgrading its outlet layout, ABC kept improving its financial service ability for presence-void villages and towns, key urban areas and emerging economic zones. And it filled up the blank of financial service in emerging urban areas, top 100 economically advanced counties, top 1,000 towns and economically major towns. So far, new outlets have been running steadily and performing soundly. As introduced, in 2012, average deposit increment of new outlets reached RMB157 million, 2.8 times ABC’s average; average savings deposit increment was RMB123 million, 3.5 times ABC’s average.

In recent years, ABC has been actively fulfilling its social responsibility to serve Sannong (agriculture, farmers and rural areas) by improving its rural financial service ability and expanding outlet coverage in counties. From 2011 to 2012, around 67% of its new outlets were set up in Central and Western China, and the number of new county-level outlets reached 49, basically covering all counties. By the end of 2012, ABC had set up manual-business-processing outlets in Mohe County, Heilongjiang and Wulan County, Qinghai, opened offsite self-service banks in Wanshan Special District, Guizhou, and prepared to open tier-one sub-branches in Huma County and Tahe County, Heilongjiang. Thus, county (city) coverage of ABC outlets has basically reached 100%.

Moreover, ABC also promoted the building of rural financial services and took multiple measures to fill up the blank of financial service in villages and towns. From 2011 to 2012, it set up 3 new outlets in villages void in financial service in Guangdong. Despite the difficult environment, inconvenient traffic and high operation cost, it set up 11 new outlets in villages without access to financial services in Liangshan Prefecture, Aba Prefecture and Ya’an City, Sichuan. These measures effectively helped provide financial services that were beneficial for farmers.