About 203.8 billion yuan (US$27.8 billion) worth of micro loans have been offered to date to 77.42 million rural households, said a high-ranking official from the China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC) on Wednesday.

The effort had covered 32.6 percent of all rural households and helped more than 300 million farmers, said Jiang Dingzhi, vice chairman of the CBRC, at the ongoing international micro loan seminar in southern China's Hainan Province.

The figures represented nearly 60 percent of all qualified households that applied for micro loans to support agricultural production and small businesses, he added.

Jiang stressed the importance of establishing a sound rural credit system and better management of micro loans, and providing farmers with financial training to better serve the agricultural sector and rural areas.

As of mid-December, China had 25 rural financial institutions: 13 village banks, four lending firms and eight rural credit cooperatives.

(Xinhua News Agency December 27, 2007)