OREANDA-NEWS. November 30, 2011. To promote the further development of international trade finance, Agricultural Bank of China Limited (ABC) earnestly carried out the requirements of relevant ministries of the state, supported the development of real economy with trade finance and brought the important role of trade finance in serving customers' needs, adjusting the economic structure and promoting the transformation of growth pattern into full play, thus achieving obvious effect. By the end of September, the volume of international trade finance transactions conducted by ABC amounted to USD72.4 billion, representing a year-on-year increase of 94% and balance of trade finance transactions in domestic and foreign currencies was USD19.85 billion, up 51.7% over the beginning of the year, reported the press-centre of ABC.

According to relevant personnel in charge of the International Banking Department of ABC, ABC has actively taken a series of effective measures to promote the development of international trade finance, such as allocating dedicated scale and funds. It also encouraged transforming general working capital loans into trade finance loans while conducting dedicated management for trade finance scale and funds to check the trade finance scale in RMB and implement the lower limit management. By the end of September, the international trade finance loans both in domestic and foreign currencies accounted for 13.36% of short-term working capital loans, up 6.52 percentage points over the year beginning.

Additionally, ABC promoted a balanced development of import and export trade finance transactions by improving the international trade finance structure and put forward a rapid development of import trade finance transactions in accordance with the policies of relevant authorities of the state at the same time of supporting the export of domestic products and conducting export trade finance transactions well. As of the end of September, the volume of ABC's import trade finance transactions reached about USD55.1 billion, accounting for as much as 76% of its total international trade finance transactions.

Since this year, ABC has constantly optimized its trade finance procedures by adjusting transaction examination and approval procedures, improving the calculation method of credit lines to foreign trade enterprises and perfecting its management of trade finance guarantee, etc. based on the risk control.

Also since this year, at the same time of constantly promoting the development of traditional trade finance products, ABC has launched cross-border RMB Rongyitong series products in accordance with the state's policies and customers' needs and plans to study and launch many other products like bulk commodity international trade finance and international accounts receivable pool financing. At present, ABC has established a complete trade finance product system covering import and export trade, cross-border RMB trade, domestic and overseas linkage trade and domestic trade, etc.

By strictly observing regulatory requirements and management policies of foreign exchange, ABC has strengthened its examination for the trade background and management of self-liquidating of trade finance loans, and tightly controlled its trade finance risks. As of the end of September, ABC's international trade finance reported a non-performing ratio of only 0.42%, down 0.21 percentage point over the year beginning.