After more than 20 years of reform on rural financial system, China has now established a system, which takes the rural credit cooperative as the heart and formal financial institutions as the backbone. And again, the commercial, policy-oriented as well as the cooperative financial institutions have also been included into this system.
The six major financial institutions of China rural banks are as follows: agriculture bank (commercial bank); agricultural development bank (policy-oriented bank); rural credit cooperatives, rural commercial banks and rural cooperative banks (rural cooperative financial institutions); and post saving institutions. Since the financial system reform, the agriculture bank, which acts as one of the three drivers (agriculture bank, agricultural development bank and rural credit cooperatives) for rural financial course, has retreated from the rural financial market following the state-owned commercial bank. The business scope of agricultural development bank also shrank largely because of policy-based losses.
As a formal financial institution of China rural areas, the rural credit cooperative not only owns the most branches (over 30.000), which nearly spread all over the villages, towns and even the countryside, but also is the only one who has direct business with rural families. And moreover, it also plays the leading role in offering financial services for countryside and agricultural economy. However, rural credit cooperative has failed to establish a complete rural financial system providing differentiated financial services as a result of enormous non-performing loans and losses.
Due to the imbalanced development in regional economy and the co-existing of different economic structures and ownership patterns, there are great differentials inside rural credit cooperatives, which determine that its future development destines to diversify. So it is historically inevitable that some rural credit cooperatives might develop toward commercial banks.
Presently, there are many informal financial institutions in China rural financial market such as pawnshops, ROSCA (Rotating Savings and Credit Association), private loans, feneration, the existence of which reflects the imbalance of rural financial institution and the financial dualism.
By the end of 2005, there have been provincial-level cooperatives among 25 provinces (districts, cities) across China, and such institutes as Beijing rural commercial bank, Shanghai rural commercial bank and Tianjin rural cooperative bank were set up in succession. Besides, 60 rural cooperative banks and 12 rural commercial banks have been established in China, and 9 rural cooperative bank institutions are prepared for construction; and 519 institutions with the city as the legal person have been formed. Moreover, the capital adequacy ratio of majority of credit cooperatives is better than that of commercial banks.
List of China rural commercial banks
Being the result of in-depth reform on rural credit cooperatives with better assets superiority in developed regions, China rural commercial banks has developed well. At present, the non-performing loan ratio and capital adequacy ratio can basically meet the supervisory standard.
Total assets of some rural commercial banks, 2005 (unit: RMB billion)
Unlike other commercial banks, the emerging rural commercial bank faced a completely different conditions and foundations for development at the very beginning, which required it to improve the core competitiveness for risk prevention so as to become powerful in the domestic financial market.
Premier Wen Jiabao pointed out clearly in the report on the Work of the government of 2006, the private and foreign capitals should be introduced into the rural financial market in order to support the rural economy and deepening the rural financial reform is the key for the next stage.
After the release of policies on China rural financial reform, especially the policy on new rural construction put forward by the Central Government, the opportunities in rural areas are much greater. With the improvement of rural economy, the risk will be decreased accordingly, and the investment value will emerge along with the implementation of the policies. Meanwhile, as the reform & opening are speeding up, foreign financial institutes and investors will pay more attention to rural finance. Consequently, China rural commercial bank market will see a huge development potential.
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