A "micro-credit loans to farmers" pilot program in Wuyuan County in eastern Jiangxi Province has been ISO 9001:2000 certified.

It demonstrates that China's micro loans efforts in rural areas have grown from a mere financial business to a functioning service with its own characteristics.

Qi Xixiao, a Wuyuan farmer, got into trouble this Spring Festival after most of his 17 hectares of contracted saplings froze or were starved to death by the heaviest snow in decades.

Luckily, he received a 20,000 yuan (2,797 U.S. dollars) loan without a mortgage from the Wuyuan County Rural Credit Union, the major area lender to farmers.

"With the loan, I can buy seedlings before the springtime. It gives me hope."

In total, 33,481 rural Jiangxi households have received micro loans worth 569 million yuan to date to restore their crops and production after the snow disaster.

China's collective land-ownership system is a major constraint on farm borrowing and investment. Farmland cannot be bought or sold. The lack of land ownership leaves farmers with little collateral to secure long-term loans. The absence of land markets prevents most from consolidating land into larger operations that can achieve economies of scale.

To solve this problem, the central government began to experiment with micro-loan programs in several counties, including Wuyuan, in 2000 to boost farm borrowing and investment.

In the experiment, committees composed of selected village residents rated the credit worthiness of all village households based on their income, past borrowing, loan repayments, as well as reputation with neighbors.

Each household was assigned to one of four or five risk classes and issued a certificate that could be redeemed at local rural credit cooperatives for the loan amount set for their class.

The micro loans operate by lending small amounts to individuals without collateral, normally 10,000 yuan to 30,000 yuan. The highest amount could be up to 100,000 yuan.

In the first year of its implementation, Wuyuan County Rural Credit Union lent 150 million yuan to 23,519 rural households, nearly half of the total rural households. More than 95 percent of the debtors returned the principal and interest in time.

In 2001, the "Wuyuan mode" was popularized across the country. The micro-loan program was implemented by more than 90 percent of rural credit cooperatives, major sources of capital for agriculture in China, by the end of that year.

After seven years of development, the country's micro-loan mode has become more mature and better regulated. "The micro loans ended the history of difficult lending and borrowing and bad credit environment in rural areas", said Xiao Siru, China Banking Association deputy chief and also the Jiangxi Provincial Rural Credit Union president.

"Micro loans are a remarkable innovation in China's rural credit regulation systems. It consulted the Bangladeshi micro-credit concept that lent small amounts to poor individuals without collateral, but eliminated the high-interest rates, short period of lending and the orientation to lend money to women."

Different from the 20 percent annual rate of Grameen Bank, a Bangladeshi micro credit concept that has been replicated in more than 100 nations, the annual rate of China's micro loans is less than 10 percent.

"The Wuyuan mode is never less meaningful than the Grameen Bank. It has tackled the capital bottleneck of the largest population of farmers in the world," said Fan Fangzhi, a Jiangxi Agriculture University economics professor.

China's micro loans have won farmers' hearts since its entry into the market. The balance of micro loans had reached 204 billion yuan. Chinese banks have provided micro loans worth more than 900 billion yuan to date and benefited more than 77 million households, about 25 percent of all rural households.

"ISO9001:2000 is an internationally-recognized certification. This shows China's regulation in micro loans has reached international standard,"said quality control expert Zhang Li when speaking on the Wuyuan County Rural Credit Union's ISO certification on February 18.