Credit to farmers as their value goes up

WANG Dianyong, a 50-year-old villager from Yanjin County of Henan Province, was the first among his peers to convert his credit information into loans for his pig farming business.

In 2016, with a loan of 20,000 yuan (US$2,900), Wang took two years to expand his pig farm from a dozen pigs or so to more than 400. “The bank loan was the solution to all my predicaments,” said Wang, “the fact that I was able to pay back every loan in time with interest made me more creditworthy in the eyes of the bank.”

For farmers like Wang in the county, to apply for an assessment of their credit is the first and most crucial step before they get a loan from the local rural commercial bank.

“The bank gives applicants different lines of credit based on their credit rating. The higher the rating, the larger the credit line and lower the interest rate,” says Li Xinyue, chief of the Bank of Agriculture and Commerce in Yanjin.

Over the past several years, an increasing amount of farmers’ credit information has been incorporated into the national credit database and similar platforms. Thus, there has been an increase in the credit value of more farmers.

As a crucial step to improve the credit and financing environment in the countryside and attract more credit and investment into the rural areas, local governments have been ramping up efforts to build rural credit systems to boost the economy.

As of early 2017, the Zhengzhou Central sub-branch of the People’s Bank of China had completed the building of a rural credit information system for Henan, the most populous province in the country.