Pilot reforms of the rural credit cooperatives (RCCs) in seven provinces and one municipality achieved a staged success, said a senior official of the China Banking Regulatory Commission here Wednesday.

Liu Mingkang, chairman of the commission, told a press conference that in these regions, a new framework for the RCCs' supervision and administration has taken shape and the RCCs' ownership restructuring has proceeded as scheduled.

Their capacity of providing the needed financial services to agricultural production, farmers and rural areas has also been improved, he said.

The reform began at the beginning of 2003 and the eight selected provinces and municipality were Jilin, Shandong, Jiangxi,Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Shanxi, Guizhou and Chongqing.

By the end of September this year, 10 rural commercial or cooperative banks had been incorporated, and other 14 banks had been approved to prepare for incorporation, he said.

The average capital adequacy ration of RCCs, rural commercial banks and rural cooperative banks in these regions reached 7.38 percent, up 11.2 percentage point from the beginning of 2003.

Loans outstanding made by these institutions to agriculture andrural households totaled 340.5 billion yuan (41 billion US dollars), a growth of 139.7 billion yuan (17 billion US dollars) or a 69.6percent increase from the beginning of 2003. Their aggregate profit amounted to 2.516 billion yuan (303 million US dollars), hesaid.

The proposed reform program for the newly approved 21 provincesand municipalities last August will be approved and implemented atthe end of this year and at that time more than half of the provincial credit unions in these regions will be incorporated, Liu said.

Source: Xinhua