HONG KONG/BEIJING (Reuters) -Agricultural Bank of China Ltd (AgBank), the country’s third-largest lender by assets, reported a 3.48% rise in first-half net profit on Tuesday.
AgBank said net profit for the first six months of the year totalled 133.23 billion yuan ($18.27 billion), up from a restated 128.75 billion yuan a year earlier.
“Looking forward into the second half of the year, as China’s economy has strong resilience and potential of development, its fundamentals of long-term sustainability will remain unchanged,” the bank said in a filing.
The bank said it will improve financial services for the real economy, provide more support to the manufacturing industry and tech innovation.
The bank’s net interest margin – a key gauge of profitability – stood at 1.66% at end-June, down from 1.7% at the end of March.
AgBank’s non-performing loan ratio came in at 1.35% at the end of the second quarter, down from 1.37% at the end of March, the filing showed.
($1 = 7.2916 Chinese yuan renminbi)
(Reporting by Selena Li and Ziyi Tang, Editing by Louise Heavens)
