Agricultural policy bank's profits surge

BEIJING - The Agricultural Development Bank of China, one of the country's three policy banks, saw its net profit up 7.5 percent year on year to 15.2 billion yuan ($2.5 billion) in 2014, the bank's governor Zheng Hui disclosed on Tuesday.

Its operating profit last year came in at 50.56 billion yuan, according to Zheng, while the non-performing loan ratio at the bank settled at 0.57 percent, down 0.14 percentage points from the rate seen a year earlier.

As the sole agriculture policy lender in China, the bank said it has stepped up support to the sector in 2014. Its outstanding loans for agriculture support totaled around 2.6 trillion yuan as of the end of last year, accounting for over 90 percent of its overall loans.

In the "No 1 Central Document" released on Sunday, Chinese leaders asked the Agricultural Development Bank to extend more loans to rural infrastructure and cautiously develop self-run businesses.