China’s AgBank confident on meeting $12.42bln target

The lender has no immediate plan to buy a foreign company as central bank's recent move won't affect it much.

Agricultural Bank of China Ltd. can achieve its net profit target this year of CNY82.9 billion ($12.42 billion), Executive Vice President Yang Kun said Tuesday.

The bank has no plan for now to acquire a foreign company, Yang said, when asked by reporters on the sidelines of a forum about AgBank's expansion plans.

He also said the central bank's recent hike in the reserve requirement ratio for some of the country's biggest banks, including AgBank, won't affect the lender much as it still has sufficient funds for lending.

AgBank's loan-to-deposit ratio is around 70%, he said, below China's official ceiling of 75%.

In mid-October, the People's Bank of China raised the reserve ratio for six Chinese banks by 0.5 percentage point to 17.5% for two months, the Xinhua News Agency and some other state media reported. The other five banks affected are Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd., China Construction Bank Corp., Bank of China Ltd., China Merchants Bank Co. and China Minsheng Bank Corp., Xinhua said.

View the full story in the Wall Street Journal.