In recent years, ICBC, by fully implementing the strategic arrangement of the Central Government on providing financial services for Sannong (agriculture, rural areas and farmers), has been giving full play to its advantages in credit and comprehensive financial services to support the rural revitalization strategy and to facilitate targeted poverty-alleviation. By the end of 2017, ICBC’s loan balance related to agriculture reached nearly RMB1.9 trillion, up by RMB320 billion over the past five years, representing an increase of 21%. Besides, ICBC continues to advance the building of self-service channels in counties and rural areas, putting in place nearly 30,000 ATMs and 9,000 self-service banks. Together with online banking and mobile banking, impoverished county areas has been covered by a complete set of financial services.

As introduced by an official from the bank, in serving Sannong, ICBC gives priority to its own cutting edge of “Comprehensive Corporate Finance”. Centered on customers and directed by customer needs, ICBC has been boosting its financial services for Sannong through multiple means, including the modes of “On-balance+Off-balance”, “Intellectual Support + Financing” and “Online+Offline”, and has been sparing no efforts to overcome the drawbacks and shore up weak links in financial services. Besides, ICBC proactively introduces a range of new and preferential financing patterns for agriculture to effectively allocate financial resources to the vast rural areas.

To meet the increasingly diverse financial demands of leading agriculture enterprises, ICBC has launched a series of complete, comprehensive and all-product financial services. For example, in seeding and harvesting season, ICBC will provide financing support for state-owned farms of large farm groups like the Xingjiang Production and Construction Corps, Beidahuang Group and Haiken Group, as well as other leading enterprises engaged in harvesting, stocking and agricultural product processing and agricultural production material producing, with a view to guaranteeing the grain and cotton production in the reclamation areas of each Group nationwide. To support the animal husbandry, ICBC also provides construction loans and liquidity loans for breeding projects of leading enterprises in the industry, including Mengniu, Yili, Guangming, Beijing Capital Agribusiness Group, Shuanghui, Haoyue Group and Chuying Agro-Pastoral Group.

As to the small- and medium-sized agriculture enterprises and farmers in short of collateral, ICBC is dedicated to solving their financing difficulties through supply chain finance. By collaborating with the cotton trade market affiliated to China Co-op, ICBC offers cotton traders the “Cotton Trade Link”, an exclusive and electronic product for supply-chain financing in different areas, which enormously streamlines the approval process of the Bank and realizes the “T+0” lending. Since its launch in 2009 to the end of 2017, the “Cotton Trade Link” has granted more than 1,900 loans for over 900 enterprises, with an accumulated amount exceeding RMB18 billion, which greatly promotes cotton trade nationwide.

In regard to key poverty-alleviation projects, ICBC helps explore economic growth engines in poverty-stricken areas through the combination mode of “Intellectual Support + Financing”. For example, ICBC exclusively sets up a Sub-fund for Extremely Distressed Towns and Villages under Poverty Alleviation Fund for Guizhou Province to provide fund support for infrastructure construction, rural environmental governance, and living condition improvement in 20 extremely distressed towns and villages, including Shimen Village in Weining County and Sanbao Village in Qinglong County. This is the first sub-fund established under a poverty alleviation fund of provincial level in China.

Besides, to support agriculture-related enterprises, provide consumers with cheap and quality agricultural products, and facilitate targeted-poverty alleviation in poverty-stricken areas, ICBC makes full use of “ICBC Mall”, an e-commerce platform to build the mode of “Internet+Commerce+Finance”. By the end of 2017, the number of merchants from impoverished counties on the “ICBC Mall” platform has reached over 500, covering 246 state-level impoverished counties in 20 provinces, cities and autonomous regions, with a commodity category of over 3,200 and a sales revenue of above RMB20 billion.