Ping An launches poverty alleviation cooperation project to help farmers in Guizhou

Ping An Insurance Group signed a poverty alleviation cooperation agreement with Taijiang county in Southwest China’s Guizhou Province on Monday, marking the first industrialized poverty alleviation project involving insurance capital, said Sheng Ruisheng, spokesman and board secretary of Ping An, at a press conference at the China Insurance Regulatory Commission on Thursday.

This model will reduce costs for poverty alleviation funds through exemption from interest rates and collateral, and will directly provide means of production for low-income families to support their agricultural production, said Sheng.

Sheng told the Global Times on the sidelines of the conference that the company will spread the Taijiang model to other agricultural regions such as Northwest China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, Northwest China’s Shaanxi Province and Central China’s Hunan Province.

The model is expected to help 50,000 to 100,000 people escape poverty within a year, Sheng said.

“The Taijiang model only covers edible mushrooms, but we hope to apply this model to other agricultural products by also providing guarantee insurance and interest subsidies to poor rural households,” he said.

The company has provided more than 400 billion yuan ($60 billion) in risk guarantees via agricultural insurance to 57.3 million rural households, and has paid claims worth more than 700 million yuan, according to a statement sent to the Global Times.