Over recent years, ICBC has developed a targeted poverty relief model featuring “industry plus e-commerce poverty alleviation” by fully leveraging its advantages in both finance and technology. In this way, ICBC has supported the poverty-stricken areas to win the tough battle against poverty. According to statistics, ICBC has channeled more than RMB26 million for industrial poverty reduction into the four designated counties - Tongjiang, Nanjiang, Wanyuan and Jinyang of Sichuan Province for the past three years. At the same time, ICBC Mall, the e-commerce platform of ICBC, provides a channel for impoverished areas to sell their high-quality agricultural products, thus effectively bringing more income to the poor households.

An officer from ICBC said, while giving funding support to the poor areas, the Bank attaches more importance to industrial support, in order to help poor households in these areas improve their capabilities of seeking self-development and independent poverty alleviation, and finally realize sustainable development. In 2016, ICBC rolled out a series of breeding projects in Wanyuan (black chicken), Nanjiang (Mongolian gazelles) and Tongjiang (black pigs), and also built a high-yield demonstration base of pepper in Jinyang, occupying an area of 1,000 mu and assisting the collective economy of 10 villages. In 2017, by further promoting the experiences, ICBC launched 80 thousand baby black chicken in Wanyuan, nearly 500 Mongolian gazelles in Nanjiang, and 3,800 meat rabbits in Tongjiang, and also kicked off a large-scale potato cultivation project with an area of 4,800 mu in Jinyang. The efforts have shifted the anti-poverty drive toward being self-reliant and scale-forming in the poor areas.

With respect to the use of poverty reduction capital, ICBC has actively explored an industrial poverty-alleviation model which combines “ICBC, the government, village party branch and village committee, enterprises and households”. Thanks to the model, resources are invested on the basis of local conditions, and the capital is used in a more efficient way. ICBC donated the baby pigs/gazelles/chicken it bought from leading enterprises to the poor households; the government was responsible for supervising the projects; village party branch and village committee were in charge of day-to-day management, while leading enterprises took charge of large-scale scientific operations, technical guidance, disease prevention & treatment, buyback and insurance purchase. All related parties coordinated well to ensure the projects could run scientifically and efficiently. Under this model, a group of vigorous projects of featured agricultural products were carried out, thereby enabling the anti-poverty capital to generate higher revenue. What’s more, the impoverished households were provided with employment opportunities and temporary extra incomes. Therefore, they and even the entire county areas were highly motivated to be determined to shake off poverty on an independent basis. Preliminary data show that there were more than 2,200 poor households benefiting from the poverty reduction projects in the four counties in 2017, with each increasing income by over RMB3,000.

At the same time of supporting the development of upstream industries, ICBC, based on its excellent operations of e-commerce, has actively expanded the anti-poverty model integrating “e-commerce, enterprises and households” in an effort to address difficulties in sales of agricultural products and poor recognition of good products in the poverty-striken areas. Local pavilions with distinctive characteristics make debut on the homepage of ICBC Mall. ICBC provides the merchants in poor areas with fee and margin discounts and long-distance e-commerce operation training, among other supports. This offers an online channel for selling high-quality agricultural products and eases the concerns of farmers. To date, over 500 merchants in poor areas have gone online in the ICBC Mall to promote 3,238 locally-featured agricultural products and rural tourism products with a total turnover of RMB22.4 billion. These merchants come from 246 national-level poverty-stricken counties in 20 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities.