Taiwan Agricultural Bank's 14th anniversary wish: integrate information from all credit departments nationwide, and also build an agricultural logistics platform
They invited farmers' associations and young farmers to set up stalls in front of the bank's main entrance, and the executives even rolled up their sleeves and walked to the blood donation bus at 228 Peace Memorial Park to donate blood. The Agricultural Bank held these activities to celebrate its own 14th birthday. The birth of the Agricultural Bank began with a painful past. More than ten years ago, credit departments of grassroots farmers' and fishermen's associations kept erupting with illegal excess lending, and the non-performing loan ratio once exceeded 13%. Of the more than 300 credit departments of farmers' and fishermen's associations, one third had overdue loan ratios exceeding 15%. Chairman Wu Ming-min said this was simply a world record! The government established the Agricultural Bank in 2005 and began tackling the chaos of non-performing loan ratios. After 14 years, the non-performing loan ratio has now dropped to 0.45%.
A row of stalls selling specialty agricultural products lined the entrance of the Agricultural Bank, with fragrant Shimen Farmers' Association rice dumplings, Xinshe Farmers' Association shiitake mushrooms, and also preserved eggs and salted eggs. Young farmers also came to display and sell chrysanthemum tea, nearly making the whole thing a Dragon Boat Festival theme. Wu Ming-min introduced the stalls, saying that this year there were 25 stalls and 30 product sources. The Agricultural Bank especially focused on the issue of assisting young farmers, so it reserved 6 stalls for young farmers, allowing them to give more exposure to their good products.
However, the Agricultural Bank has bigger things to do in these 2 years. In April this year it already established an information subsidiary, with the goal of integrating the information flow of 311 credit departments of farmers' and fishermen's associations and their branches, a total of 1,169 business locations, preparing to provide customers with more comprehensive services. The current progress is that 171 have already been integrated, and all are expected to be completed next year. This subsidiary is currently wholly owned by the Agricultural Bank with 550 million, and in the future it is considering letting other farmers' and fishermen's associations join.
The information subsidiary was established to promote the shared development of information among farmers' and fishermen's associations. Last year, 158 credit departments joined the shared use of information, already half of the credit departments of farmers' and fishermen's associations nationwide. The Agricultural Bank believes that establishing an information-sharing business company can allow resources to be used effectively and accelerate the pace of integration, and can also help achieve another goal, namely the establishment of a logistics platform.
Wu Ming-min explained this logistics platform: as long as the products of various farmers' and fishermen's associations have a production traceability record or have obtained organic certification, they can all be listed here. For consumers, shopping on this platform is both convenient and safe. After placing an order, the information is sent directly to the farmers' association to which the product belongs, while cash flow services are provided by the Agricultural Bank. After a product transaction is completed, the Agricultural Bank only collects a small platform service fee. For farmers' associations, promoting products carries no burden: there is no need to set up their own website, and they do not have to worry about painstaking management and maintenance, nor do they have to find ways to build brand awareness. For consumers who especially love buying farmers' association brand products, this platform should be very attractive.
Recently, the Council of Agriculture greatly lowered the score threshold for farmers and fishermen's children applying for scholarships and grants, and also increased the amount by 30%. Now the Agricultural Bank is also going to provide scholarships, but in a targeted way. This year is a trial period, first focusing on students from the colleges of agriculture of well-known domestic agricultural universities - National Taiwan University and National Chung Hsing University - providing scholarships to them in order to cultivate more outstanding agricultural professionals.
