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We know that in recent years, financial institutions have done a lot of work in poverty alleviation, but there are still many farmers and township enterprises reporting that there is a problem with loan difficulties. As the poverty alleviation task has been completed as scheduled, may I ask what new achievements will be made in terms of consolidating the results of poverty alleviation and rural revitalization? Thank you.
Guo Shuqing:
We should all give our respective answers to your question, but due to time constraints, we will get Gu Shu, chairman of the Agricultural Bank of China, to answer it.
Gu Shu: Thank you for your question. I understood your questions had two parts. First, what are the bank's plans for consolidating the results of poverty alleviation and rural revitalization? The second is to reflect on the availability of rural finance. I will answer them separately.
For the first part of your question, taking the Agricultural Bank of China as an example, I would say that we are ready to focus on three aspects in the next step. The first is to ensure that we embark on a program of rural revitalization after the victory in poverty alleviation. The second is to support the development of modern agriculture and rural industries. The third is to support rural construction. This is the answer to your first question.
In terms of focusing on the effective connection between poverty alleviation in financial services and rural revitalization, I will talk about one main point due to the time limit. In the 832 key counties that have benefited from national poverty alleviation initiative, the Agricultural Bank of China will continue to provide strong credit lines and loans in 2021. The growth rate of loans to poverty alleviated counties continues to exceed the average growth rate of loans of the entire bank. This is the point I want to stress. In terms of modern agriculture and rural industries, we plan to focus on the national food security industry belt, the construction of high-standard farmland, and the turnaround of the seed industry, and provide financial support in these three areas. Our current loan balance in the field of food security is 160 billion yuan, and we plan to further invest more than 60 billion yuan this year. In addition, we will increase credit allocation for primary processing and deep processing of specialty agricultural producing localities. Previously, the Central Rural Work Conference pointed out that the main body of the industrial chain should be kept at the county level, and the benefits of the value chain should be reserved for farmers. The third is rural construction. We will focus on 11 key areas of national rural and agricultural investment, and continue to increase support for eligible rural aspects such as water, electricity, road, natural gas and housing. The Agricultural Bank of China's loan scale in the field of rural construction has exceeded 1 trillion yuan. We will further increase our investment in the future to ensure that the growth rate of loans does not decline. This is my brief answer to the first aspect of your question.
Regarding the second part of your question, you mentioned the availability of financial services and the difficulty of obtaining loans in financial services. I want to talk about the plan of the Agricultural Bank of China.
Serving agriculture, rural areas and farmers are surely demanding us to be more down-to-earth, but on the other hand, we are also considering how to solve the problem of accessibility. The key point is that we think that the "three rural" services should not only be grounded, but also have wings -- the wings of technology. This is mainly reflected in channel innovation and product innovation, with two key points.
One is channel innovation. We will strengthen the construction of offline physical outlets and build more outlets in counties and towns, and at the same time increase the promotion of mobile banking in rural areas. Mobile banking is very common in cities, and next we must make mobile banking more in line with the needs of rural areas and farmers. By the end of last year, the Agricultural Bank of China had registered 165 million mobile banking customers in rural counties, and the number of its monthly active customers was close to 50 million. This year, we will further increase efforts in this area to allow farmers to obtain financial services more conveniently and quickly. The other aspect is product innovation. We will launch online financing products to make it easier for farmers to obtain loans and financial services. For example, an innovative online financial product has been launched called "Huinong e-Loan." This product realizes online application, online approval, online issuance, and online repayment of rural clients' loans, thus comprehensively improving the coverage and processing efficiency of rural clients' loans. It provides more credit and loan support to more farmers. By the end of last year, the balance of this product had exceeded 350 billion yuan, benefiting 2.76 million rural households. We plan to invest another 160 billion yuan this year to make the balance of "Huinong e-Loan" exceed 500 billion yuan. This product is very effective in many places, especially in some remote areas. Let me give you an example: Tibet. Based on the characteristics of its industry, our Tibet bank branch has innovatively launched a group of farmer-benefiting products that poor people can understand and find easy to operate, such as the "yak loan," "highland barley loan". At the end of last year, the balance of targeted poverty alleviation loans exceeded 6 billion yuan. More than 70% of poverty-stricken households with registered cards in Tibet received microfinance support from our bank, accounting for more than 90% of the loans provided by the financial institutions in Tibet. We are also making a lot of effort in this regard to solve the problem of financial availability for rural households, especially in hinterlands as you mentioned just now. Thank you again for your question.
