OREANDA-NEWS. January 17, 2013. Agricultural Bank of China Limited (ABC) obtained two special honors – the “Ninth China’s Best Corporate Citizen Awards” and the “2012 Outstanding Chinese Enterprises in Corporate Social Responsibility” - for its excellent performance in this regard. The two awards were granted at the “2012 China Corporate Citizen Forum and the Ninth China’s Best Corporate Citizen” sponsored by the 21st Century and the “2012 China Business News – China’s Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)” sponsored by China Business News, respectively. ABC has won the above awards for four consecutive years, reported the press-centre of ABC.

The sponsors revealed that, ABC won such honors mainly due to the high appreciation of all circles of society for its outstanding corporate structure and fulfillment of social responsibilities, and the high recognition for its whole-hearted service for Sannong (agriculture, rural areas and farmers), supporting environmental protection etc.

As a large commercial bank with both urban and rural presence, ABC sticks to the fulfillment of social responsibility when implementing its development strategy. In recent years, it focuses on the strategy and goal of “serving Sannong, interaction between urban and rural areas, integration with the international market and rendering diversified services”. And, with supporting and improving people’s life as its responsibility, ABC always proactively undertakes corporate citizen responsibilities to serve Sannong, help the needy, promote environmental protection and support the construction of frontier minority areas as well as other weak parts in social development.

It was learned that in 2012, in terms of serving Sannong, ABC enhanced the building of the financial service system, and implemented the “Hui Nong Tong” project in the vast rural areas. As at the end of September, it had issued a total of 122 million Farmer's Benefit Cards, set up 543,000 “Hui Nong Tong” service stations and distributed 1.07 million electronic machines and tools, thus effectively expanded the rural financial service coverage. In respect of supporting grain production, ABC delivered comprehensive financial services to increase grain yield, income and values, thus effectively supported China’s plan to increase its grain production capacity by 100 billion jin and build core grain areas. Closely following the construction of the “vegetable basket” program, ABC continued to strengthen its credit extension, research new service modes, and provide financial services for the whole industrial chain from planting, breeding to deep processing, storage and distribution of agricultural and sideline products. In terms of environment protection, ABC reinforced financial support to enterprises in their “energy conservation and emission reduction” efforts.

It has launched consulting services for reselling “certified emission reductions (CER) under the CDM Program (Clean Development Mechanism) It also provides professional financial services to Chinese enterprises in evaluation and market price inquiry of energy conservation and emission reduction projects.

The enterprises it serves have reduced emission of around 170,000 tons. As for supporting the construction of frontier minority areas and the development of agriculture and animal husbandry industry with ethnic regional characteristics, ABC set up more mobile financial service stations in Tibetan ethnic minority areas to fill in the local region’s financial service blank. It has built a unique “financial garrison team” in Xinjiang, rendering financial services for remote minority areas. It has supported 46 Xinjiang horticulture small and micro businesses to grow rapidly, and directly provided more than 30,000 jobs for local residents. As a result, ABC has promoted the upgrade of local industries, increased efficiencies of enterprises and raised incomes of farmers. Also, ABC actively supported the educational sector, and through launching the “Help You Grow-Excellent College Students Program” and other public welfare activities, helped poor college students study aboard, and cultivated their social practice ability.

Relevant competent personnel from ABC pointed out, ABC will continue to fulfill its social citizen responsibility, strengthen corporate citizen awareness, and pursue both business value and social value. It will strive to make progress together with all walks of life, and make contributions to the economic and social development and the building of a harmonious society.