Welcome to 2026 interim results announcement. I am very happy to be here with media friends, analysts, and the investors.

Hereby, I would like to extend a warm welcome for you active participation, and also, I would like to express active statements for your long-term support for Agricultural Bank of China. Present at today's press conference are Vice Governor Lin Li, Wang Dajun, and Board Secretary Liu Qing.

We are also joined by the directors who join us online. Here, I would like to extend to you three aspects.

First of all, the operational performance of Agriculture Bank of China. 2026 is the third year of 14th, 5-year plan.

The Agriculture Bank of China earnestly implemented the decisions and arrangement of CPC Central Committee and the State Council deeply has practiced the political and people-oriented financial work adhered to the main line of preventing risk and promoting high-quality development. Here, I would like to share with you the five figures for the operational performance of our bank.

The profit growth rate exceeded 5% in the first half year. Net profit had grown by 5.8%, an increase of 1 percentage point compared to the first quarter, and our operating income increased by 11.2% year-on-year, an increase of 0.7 percentage points compared to the first quarter, showing good growth momentum.

Also, we -- in the first half year, the return on net assets was 10.14%, maintaining a leading level among comparable peers. The second set of data is that the -- has the financing exceeded CNY 3 trillion in the first half year.

The Agriculture Bank of China effectively tapped into the financing needs of the real economy with a large-scale financing increase, including loans and bonds reaching CNY 2.2 trillion, of which the increase in local and foreign currency loans amounted to CNY 1.69 trillion, increase of 6.2%. The increase in bond investment reached CNY 1.52 trillion with a growth rate of 9.6%.

Average daily balance of core deposits amounted to CNY 29.59 trillion with an increase of CNY 3.67 trillion, achieving growth rate of 10.2%. Thirdly, the net interest margin expanded by 2 basis points, benefiting from the continuous effectiveness of our volume-price, the signature management in the first half year, the net interest margin of Agriculture Bank of China was 1.28%, 2 basis points higher than that of the first quarter, showing stabilizing trend.

The deposit cost of bonds was 1.13%, down 21 basis points from the end of last year. The cost of liability improved steadily.

Fourth, the non-performing loans ratio decreased by another 2 basis points to 1.25%, down 2 basis points from the beginning of the year. The fifth consecutive quarter of decline that the expected net gap between non-performing loans and total loans remained for 24 consecutive quarters, reflecting the strict standards for risk classification.

The provision coverage ratio for watch list loans was 138%, down 1 basis point from the beginning of the year. The provision coverage ratio was 290.1%, with provision balance remaining above CNY 1 trillion.

It demonstrated strong risk-absorbing capacity, fixed the dividend payout ratio was raised by 1 percentage point. In order to actively reward investors, the share achievement of the bank's development, the Board of Directors proposed to pay the interim dividend for 2026 by raising the ratio by 1 percentage point to 31%.

These are the achievements we have scored in the first half year, and these are the very important operational success, reflecting a balanced approach between profit growth and investment returns. It also represents a balanced consideration between scale expansion and net interest margin improvement.

Second, I would like to share with you the main work of the management team. First of all, we continue to commit to the agriculture, rural areas, and farmers business, and solidify our position as a leading bank in rural revitalization.

These agriculture and rural areas and farmers are the mission entrusted to ABC by the parties of Central Committee. ABC has always carried forward with a fine tradition of serving agriculture and rural areas, and aims to be a leading bank in rural revitalization.

In the first half year, we focused on food security. Also, we focused on rural industry, rural development, and other key areas related to strengthening and benefiting farmers, and continued to increase the credit supply.

Now as of the end of June, the balance of loans in country-level areas reached CNY 11.9 trillion, an increase of 9% over the beginning of the year. The balance of the banks' exclusive product for farmers, Huinong Yitong Loan, reached CNY 2.1 trillion, an increase of 14.2% over the beginning of the year.

The balance of deposits in country-level areas was CNY 14.94 trillion, with an increase of CNY 54.9 trillion. It contributed 40% to the bank's total deposit growth, and the proportion of county level branches rose to 56.8%.

The ABC has always taken as it's mission to serve the real economy, focusing on the contribution between old and the new growth drivers and the trend of industrial transformation, upgrading, continuously optimizing the allocation of financial resources. Grounding impact, we use the high-quality measures to support the building of a country with a strong science and technology foundation.

The growth rate of loans to tech companies and small and medium-sized tech enterprises stood at 24% and 29%, respectively. We are steadily advancing the pilot program of AIC equity investment.

31 pilot funds have been established in total, with funds invested in 56 fintech innovation projects amounting to over CNY 5.7 billion. We will step up efforts in underwriting and investing in sci-tech innovation bonds with 37 such bonds underwritten in the in the first half of the year and also the insurance exceeded CNY 120 billion.

The balance of self- amounted to CNY 13.1 billion, up by 9.7% with a focus on inclusive financing, we strengthened the capacity for sustainable development. The balance of self-operated green bonds invested amounted to CNY 173.1 billion, up by 9.7%, with a focus on inclusive financing.

We've strengthened the capacity for sustainable development. The balance of the inclusive loans reached CNY 4.88 trillion with an increase of CNY 432.4 billion, and the number of inclusive MSME borrowers reached 5.58 million, with an increase over 340,000.

The number of physical social security card users reached CNY 8.84 billion and the sale of pension entrusted management was CNY 438.6 billion, with a 14.3% increase in the number of individual pension clients, and the deposit amount rose by 36.7%. In the field of digital finance, we strongly promoted the R&D application of new generation communication, technology, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and other industries, with our loans to the digital economy increasing by 16.1%.

In response to the national policy to boost the consumption, we focused on housing mortgage, daily consumption, and other areas and kept increasing the credit supply. The balance of personal consumption loans, including credit cards, amounted to CNY 1.5 trillion, with an increase of CNY 49.054 billion.

We served the country's high-level opening up and promoted the development of cross-border RMB business in orderly manner. In the first half-year, the cross-border RMB settlement volume reached CNY 1.96 trillion, and the international settlement volume of domestic branches amounted $867.5 trillion.

As of the end of June, the total number of personal customers of ABC reached 905 million, maintaining the first place in the industry. The number of corporate customers exceeded 14 million, with an increase of 910,000 since the beginning of the year.

The number of credit card customers was 76.98 million, with an increase of 2.82 million. The number of personal mobile bank customers was 829 million, with 282 million monthly active users and 295 million monthly active users on mobile devices.

ABC has always been customer-oriented and has continuously strengthened the construction of a customer service system, achieving common development with its customers. In terms of retail customers, it has deepened the business system of customer stratification and classification, focused on key customer groups such as elderly, salaried individuals, and new citizens, and providing differentiated services based on their needs.

For the corporate clients, based on the customer's needs, we provide comprehensive service to medium-sized enterprise customers and provide the customized service to the medium-sized clients and the convenience service for the inclusive small and micro-enterprises. We will also adhere to the technology-driven transformation, and based on different scenarios, we continue to optimize account opening process, enrich online product services, and enhance the capabilities of mobile and online service as to further enhance client experience.

We also stay true to our original aspiration and founding mission to serve the people with financial services, promote the rural service project, introduce tailored rules for rural services, provide quality financial service for special client groups. Fourthly, we must forge ahead with reform and leverage smart bank construction to drive business development.

ABC actively embraces the ways of AI development, accelerate the construction of smart banks, and takes the application of intelligent agents as the starting point, promotes the coordinated development of business, technology, and data and continuously improves the AI plus capability system, we will accelerate the digital business innovation. And in terms of product innovation, we have built a digital operations platform driven by AI technology and facilitated by tablets, helping to expand and increased online credit.

In terms of channel innovation, we released the 11.2 version of personal online banking and continue to enrich the personalized service of mobile banking app, exploring construction of conversational and service interaction. We will also enhance the intelligence of risk prevention control, innovating the AI risk control agent, and to upgrade the entire process, the financing risk control to be more intelligent, we will deepen the AI application in compliance risk scenario and effectively enhance the quality and efficiency of the compliance management.

We will also strengthen the support for frontline staff, and we need self-developed AI agents, the Dragon Knight, to adapt to the technical requirements of different scenarios and business needs, creating corporate and AI digital assistance. And we have completed the DeepSeek, the Qianwen, the new model application and try to continue to enhance our AI capabilities.

The fifth effort is to strengthen the security defense line and escort the high-quality development, preventing -- prevention and control is always our key task. In the financial work, we will continue to focus on the risk prevention control.

We adhere to prudent and stable business strategy, continuously improve the comprehensive risk management system. In terms of credit risk, we focus on control the increase, reduce the stock, and strengthening the foundation, continuously optimizing the credit structure, and constantly improving the risk prevention control system for inclusive retail with Agriculture Bank of China's characteristic.

We will also continue to improve the market risk system, the annual policy for risk management and financial market business, and the interbank business, and strengthen risk control requirements for market business. We track and study market changes, proactively optimize business strategies, strengthen risk control, and keep relevant indicators stable.

We closely follow international situations and market changes. Dynamically adjust response strategies and ensure risk controllability.

On technology base, we steadily advance the location of computer room and continuously enhance regional disaster recovery capabilities. We also improved the network security protection, actively respond to external risk shocks, and new risk challenges.

The average daily trading volume of the distributed core system is CNY 1.96 billion, with a year-on-year increase of 17%, and the serviceability during business hours is 100 hours. We opted about the future development plan.

I believe there are 3 changes of plans. And this has created great space of development for the Agricultural Bank of China.

And also the economic structure is changing profoundly in the first 7 months of this year, the proportion of bond financing increased and this whole financial structure is changing. So this has imposed new challenges for the banks.

We need to find new benefit spaces and possibilities. And, also at the same time, we noticed that the AI technology is accelerating in its growth.

So we need to integrate the AI system into our business management system. And also, we need to control the risks related to AI development and AI technologies.

For ABC, we need to hold on to our all advantages, and we need to find our position in the whole economic development of China and we need to focus on the economic upgrading of our country, and we will have more efforts put into the country-level economy and real economy development, and focus on our 5 priorities of financial development and upgrade our own credit system in order to better serve the economic upgrading and transformation. And also, we will have more attention paid to the international financial market and how we cooperate with our partners.

And also, we need to seize this opportunity of AI technology development to empower our whole process of system of development using AI technology. And looking into the second half of the business operation, our executives and our Board of Directors will coordinate the keys of works we have done in the previous half of the year of 2026, and we are going to increase our quality of asset, and we will try to improve the quality of our assets and also to create more value for our investors in the future.

And that's my introduction. Thank you very much.

Now let's go to the Q&A session. Let's give the floor to the Secretary of BOD, Madam Liu Qing.

Thank you very much, President Wang. Now let's go to the Q&A session.

In this session [Operator Instructions] Okay. Let's give the microphone to this madam.

I'm from CCTV, and I've listened to President Wang's introduction. We noticed that the operation revenue and the net profit has increased a very high level of growth, and it's very resilient and a lot of growth are higher than the first season.

So my question is for the executives, what are your expectations for the second half of year's growth? And what are the driving forces for the growth?

Thank you so much for the question. Just as you've mentioned, we have always stick to the path of high-quality development.

We want to have a long-term development, and we want to have an active position in this changing dynamics of the economy. So in the first half of the year, while we are serving the real economy and while we are having this very good performance, we have also made a lot of progress in the indicators of financial performances.

And all these progress have shown our very stable pattern of development and our strategy for stabilized development. And just as Mr.

Wang has introduced, looking into the second half of the year, we are very confident to keep on to this track of faster development and maintain a good operation revenue. And if we look at the outside environment, we can see that the economy is showing a trend that the dynamics are towards the internal forces and also the whole structure of the economy is upgrading and optimizing.

And that has shown there is a great resilience to the China's economic development. And this stable microeconomic situation has created a very good environment for ABC's development for our high-quality development.

And if we look into the past of our history's development and if we look at ABC's own situation of development, we can find that we have our competitive advantages always. We have always focused on how to combine our own advantage with the whole environment development.

And also, we have a very great and profound basis of clients. We have very comprehensive products and a very solid capital and assets, which will be our support for future resilience and potential of development.

So speaking of the specific driving forces, first of all, we will hold on to our advantage of asset operation, which will help ensure the income from the interest payment. The Bank of China have always stick to the large number of networks all over China, especially at country level.

And now with this rural revitalization policy of China and to build a new type of rural area policy of China, we have our own driving force, and we will continue on this path. And of course, at the same time, we will have more diversified advantage being explored.

And for the second half of this year, we will continue on this path. And secondly, we have already achieved the cost of liabilities continuing to decline, and that is in an orderly manner.

And for the second half of the year, we will continue on this path. For the second -- first half of the year, this average daily increase in deposit is at a reasonable level and is providing a very good support for the real economy development.

And on the other hand, it also helps us in reducing this cost of liability. And if we look at this whole trend of development, it seems that the existing debt will gradually mature during the second half of the year and the continuous decline in debt cost will continue for a long time.

And yes, that's the trend we are going to stick to for the second half of the year. And thirdly, we have already provided more and more of financial services and solutions, and we have already made our contribution to the optimization of the economic structure.

And this is the whole trend of the whole China's financial market. There is this changing in the financial structure.

And so facing this trend, the ABC will, of course, consolidate our existing advantage. And at the same time, we will have more plans and strategies towards the future to have more long-term transaction capacities cultivated and to improve our capital management capacity, which can help us get through any kind of economic cycle.

And fourthly, we have already achieved this improvement in risk control, and that will help us to have a more solid foundation for future development. We have always regarded this risk control as our foundation of all kinds of operation.

And during the 14th 5-year plan, our NLP (sic) [ NPL ] decline rate is ranking #1 in the 4 major banks of China. And also we have this very good performance, speaking of this allowance coverage and other aspects.

And these have all set very good foundation and very solid boundary for us to control the risks within a certain field and level. So all these four factors have shown our achievements.

They have helped us to gain a very solid growth in the first half of the year, and they will continue to help us in the second half of the year. Thank you very much for the introduction about ABC's profit-making ability.

Now let's give the floor to this journalist in the middle.

Thank you. I'm from the Xinhua News Agency, Xinhua Financial News.

Mr. Wang, you mentioned that the NPL rate have been declined for 5 consecutive years, and there is this growing capacity in terms of this allowance rate.

So what is your expectation for the whole year's asset quality operation and especially for inclusive retail asset quality?

Well, thank you for your question. We have always -- ABC has always put the risk control in the core of all our works.

We always stick to the path of prudent and stable operation. We want to have this very stable and very careful risk control, which can make our whole business operation more resilient and more sustainable.

And our whole ABC's asset quality has the following features. First, this NLP ratio is dropping.

The NPL ratio is dropping. By the end of June, this NPL rate is 1.65%.

And while we stick to this category, very strict category of categorization, we still maintain this good level. And also, there is this BP dropping compared to the year 2025.

So all these numbers have shown that we have quite good risk control in terms of the asset quality. And another feature of us is that the expected ratio is dropping compared to the beginning of this year, and especially the expected [indiscernible] gap is dropping.

is dropping for a consecutive 24 seasons. And this negative number is very important for us because it shows the quality asset of us.

And also, this allowance coverage rate is very high. This balance of the allowance coverage rate has exceeded CNY 1 trillion, and that's a very good foundation.

And for the first half of this year, the growth in the whole size has reached 29%, and that is a very high level. And this number is ranking the top among other counterparts in China's banking market.

And also, you've mentioned this retail asset quality, especially the inclusive retail banking services. Well, speaking of the asset quality of this aspect, we have always put our attention on the risk control as always.

And we will make more efforts to deal with the remaining non-performing loans in this aspect, in this retail of the inclusive finance. And looking into the second half of the year, what we feel is that we still need to keep the credit and asset quality of ABC at a very good level.

So speaking of all the indicators, no matter the non-performing loan, the expected or the allowance coverage ratio and all the indicators, we still need to pay special attention to them. And we are going to do the specific things to achieve such goals.

The first is we will keep optimizing the credit structure because we always say if you want to serve the macro economy, the finance, you need to understand the macroeconomic situation. And also, we always want to understand the situation of certain industries if we want to provide some financial and credit support for such industries.

And that's why we will have more customized targeted design of the credit resources, which can suit the need of our country's economic strategic development. And we will pay special attention to the structural risks of all industries and to control disorderly competitive situations.

And we will reduce the excess overcapacity, and we will try to control the low-quality loans for our customers. And also, another measure is we will have a long-term mechanism, which can help us to look into the future and analyze the situation of things that might happen.

This is going to be a long-term mechanism for us, especially for the risks related to our customers and the high-risk customers and also the different categories of customers and how to manage the loans of those already exited the customers and also the loans that are about to do or are due to -- we are all going to pay special attention and strengthen the control of all these categories. And at the same time, we have already done a lot for the inclusive retail financing system.

And now the whole society is paying special attention to the inclusive retail finance risk control. And we are looking at this whole situation.

We are following it closely. We are having strict control of it, and we will have more policies and strategies based on our working reality like reconstructing our whole bank's credit system to manage the credit structure.

A very important measure of us is that for any credit measures, we believe it is very important. It is the front line of risk control because it's the source of any other operation of businesses.

And another important line for us is the risk control and legal compliance control. And this will help us to work with the real business of credit risk control and together to have a more effective outcome.

Risk management is a very important line, the risk management plans department form the second line of defense, focusing on independence and professionalism. We dynamically improve the risk management policy system and effectively play the role of checks and balance on business lines.

We will prevent risk middle platform from malfunctioning and the internal audit department of the bank, as they said, line of defense for risk management will focus on strengthening the independent evaluation and effectiveness of the first lines of defense and conduct the penetrating supervision to ensure that the risk management system does not lose control. At the same time, we attach great importance to external supervision on the fourth line of defense formed by social supervision, and the focus of which is to form internal and external collaboration in risk control, and joint efforts that will resonate in the same frequency to prevent the failure of internal risk control.

Therefore, the fourth line of defense are, one is to prevent the dispersion and other is to prevent failure. One is to prevent out of control and others is to prevent failure.

The second step is to actively promote new business development models. We have also considered this repeatedly and have promoted the establishment of a new business development model with the top-level design of the branch and operation of the second branch and the template marketing of the subbranch helps the business line to focus more on local logistics financial ecosystem to develop credit plans, screen high-quality customers and carry out standardized marketing activities, creating proactive customer acquisition, batch customer acquisition, and a source customer acquisition business development models and paths.

Compared with the past retail loans, there should be a big difference from fragmentation to proactive customer acquisition. The third is to promote integration between online and offline, and we need to formulate the unique competitive advantage in ABC's credit management.

This is mainly achieved through leverage ABC's grassroots branches, which are numerous and widespread, and the client manager team is strong. For us, we have a 460,000 employees, and we feel that if these employees can play their role as well, it is crucial for risk control.

We iterate and promote the model combining on-site and remote work, and make great efforts to ensure that the on-site work is solid. We also realize that it is by relying on the models never relying on one model.

Therefore, we adhere to the separation of examination and approval, post the restriction and form a mutual restrain, a business mechanism of supervision and restraint, and ensure mutual intervention to make up for the shortcomings of model decision. We feel this ourselves because the important part of the bank's credit business is due diligence.

If we simply use AI or models, we feel that due diligence will hardly be in place. Because a good due diligence should have at least 3 characteristics.

The first one is that it should be on site. The second characteristic is that it should be able to ensure authenticity and be responsible, and take up the responsibility of management.

So we personally feel that in work practice, AI plus offline integration can help improve the quality of due diligence forms a very good assistance. In this process, as always, we absolutely put an end to all forms of contact intermediaries, bank marketing, and their participation in handling business, especially for those illegal intermediaries.

If you use them, you may think that you are importing traffic, but in the end, it may be bad results. We are very firm on this point.

On the premise of implementing offline lending business, we also continuously strengthen the technology empowerment sharing and prevention control. We have a large number of rural household loans, and by using GPS positioning and AI intelligent recognition technology, we can further improve the ability of anti-counterfeiting and anti-counterfeiting of rural household loans.

We also focus on the improvement of the responsible person system for inclusive retail, standardize all aspects of the credit process, and clarify the main responsibility. First of all, making sure the managers of branches fulfill their responsibilities.

When non-performing loans or risk emerge, we shouldn't simply push the blame onto frontline employees. We also need to focus on the second-tier branches, the management responsibilities of the branches, and the responsibilities of the outlets.

We have clarified collective risk of due diligence exemption, further strengthened the supervision of the performance of management responsibilities, and strictly the elements we have a strict management and a prudent lending. In our opinion, to do a good job in lending, we need to ensure that loans can be disbursed, managed, and then reported.

Stringent management, approval, and the lending are necessary. The fifth aspect is to strengthen the construction of credit team.

We have learned and discovered that continuously improve the asset percent is very important. The credit management organization should be further optimized, and strengthen the credit management team is very important.

We need to also strengthen the rotation training of grassroots personnel in inclusive credit business and that the project personnel obtain licenses before taking up their jobs. We need to establish a true project practitioner's assessment and evaluation system to effectively enhance their ability to perform their duties.

These are the first three measures. The fourth measure for the entire bank's risk control is to strengthen risk management in key areas and accelerate the process.

In terms of real estate, the focus is still on rational use and supporting policies such as the 16 financial measures. We need to strictly implement the supervision of presale funds and adopt a policy-based approach for each project and a plan for each product, and steadily defense defuse real estate risks and resolve and dispose of them.

In the past, real estate development loans put a lot of pressure on banks and led to some non-performing loans. There are various reasons for this, but one of the reasons is the supervision of presale funds.

We should definitely learn the lesson from this. In the first half-year, from the overall situation, we have learned the non-performing loan ratio of the real estate industry of ABC compared with the beginning of the year remained stable.

On local government debt, we adhere to the principle of marketization and legalization. We standardize and support the market-oriented transformation of financing reforms, but at the same time, we also pay attention to strengthening the monitoring of the risks of the platform after the transformation.

We handle new financing in a reasonable and compliant manner, and absolutely guard against the red line of not adding new hidden debt. We also deeply realize that asset quality is always the lifeline of the bank's operational management.

We also learned that risk control of our inclusive retail business is crucial to the stability of the entire ABC and the sustainable development of the bank. Without effective risk control and compliance management, there can be no high-quality development.

We must firmly establish and practice the right view of political achievement, adhere to the bottom line thinking. Also, we need to form, from the aspects of organization, system, policy, technology, and management, making every effort to build a good credit risk culture.

In addition to management tools and measures, we also needed to promote the whole bank to build a good credit risk culture, including the asset culture based on the qualification and authenticity of customers, the authorization culture of possibility and risk matching, the professional, refined, forward-looking management culture, the risk control culture of human-machine collaboration and digital empowerment, and so on. By doing so, we can strengthen risk control, all measures, and we are confident for the long-term future development.

Now let's welcome the next question.

I'm the analyst. My name is Li Chen, a bank analyst at CITIC Securities.

I have a question about deposits. We know that deposit is the strength of ABC.

We see that the repricing of the deposit is approaching, and we have maintained relatively good retention rate of the deposits. We also noticed that liability cost of has the first half of the year.

However, we noticed that the overall pattern of social capital utilization has undergone profound changes the demand for wealth management among also increasing day by day. I want to ask this question to Wang Xinhua about the subsequent liability strategy.

Thank you very much for raising the question. We had closely focused on serving rural revitalization and the real economy actively aligned with the macro policies, regulatory requirements and market changes and continue to achieve the high-quality development in deposit business.

To summarize, it mainly shows the following three features: First, deposit growth continued to show a good momentum of stable quantity and high quality. With the average daily balance of all deposit accounts reaching RMB 39.59 trillion at the end of the first half of the year 2027, an increase of RMB 3.67 trillion, up 10.2% year-on-year.

Both growth rate and increase outperformed their competitors. The deposit ratio decreased by 0.36 percentage points year-on-year.

It is the only bank among the competitors that has kept the ratio below 3% for 9 consecutive quarters. This has provided high-quality financial resources for real economy.

Second, the core advantages of deposit business have been further consolidated from the perspective customer structure, the average daily balance of personal deposits in China reached CNY 212,800 accounting for 64.5% of all deposits in China, with an increase of CNY 1.56 trillion in the first half of the year, maintaining the leading position in the industry for 18 consecutive quarters. From the perspective regional structure, the average daily balance of out-country deposits in China stood at CNY 14.73 trillion, accounting for 44.6% of all in China.

Also the contribution rate has increased by 0.1 percentage points compared to the beginning of the year. It has further played role of ballast.

Thirdly, the coordinated development of deposit quantity and price has been achieved, and the efficiency has continued to be reduced due to growth of deposits in the past few years and the trend of maturity, the stock of time deposits with higher interest rate has entered a cycle of concentrated repricing, especially for 3 years deposits and the reduction of the benchmark interest rate up to 135 BP against the backdrop of interest expense ratio of deposits in the first half year, which was significantly compared with the previous year. Since we continue the release of the durable impact of repricing of time deposits, upon maturity, they suspect that the interest expense ratio of deposits in our bank will continue to decline in the second half of the year.

Going forward, Agricultural Bank of China will always adhere to the main responsibilities of the business and remain customer-centric, further solidify the condition of the deposit, and improve the high quality and effective improvement of liability business, as well as the risk of growth of quantity, so as to provide a strong support for either high quality development and a shareholder value return. First, we will fully meet the needs of serving rural revitalization, real economy, actively meet the financing needs of residents, and strive to build a business service model that meets the diverse needs of the customers.

As the bank continue to drive the steady growth of deposit and provide a high quality financial guarantee for serving rural revitalization of real economy. Secondly, we will continue to consolidate and enhance differentiated competitive advantage.

Our third measure to be taken is to have overall a range of all sources of our funding. We are going to follow the pattern of the social capital flow and also, on the basis of successfully handling the transfer of regular funds due for maturity.

At the same time, we need to make a formulation for the general deposits and central bank loans and other inter-bank deposits and accelerate the transformation of the settlement payment and other deposits. Altogether, we want to optimize the growth structure of the source of capital.

Fourthly, for the second half of our year, we are going to strive to maximum the benefits derived from the repricing of deposits. Also, we are going to strengthen the differentiated management of deposits throughout the whole bank to make the cost of the payment of interest to drop gradually.

I'm Yang Jingxin. I'm from China Business Newspaper.

We know that the country-level business is showing the advantage -- differentiated advantage of ABC's operation, and we know that there is a very large proportion of such part of business. So my question is, what is your plan for this next step of country-level business development?

And are there any long-term or short-term plans?

Thank you for the question. I'm going to answer your question.

And from the start of this year, ABC have followed the country policies to help the rural revitalization and support the rural and agriculture and the farmers development. As we have shared, according to the 15th 5-Year Plan of China, we should promote the high-quality development of rural area and the rural economy and to form a long-term mechanism of modern agriculture development and to better expand the great results already achieved by power alleviation efforts of China, and that is also the future direction of ABC's development.

So for ABC, we will always hold on to our banner of serving the agriculture, the rural economy, the rural area and the farmers. We will always try to improve the contribution of country-level business performance.

We hope that our country-level business can always account for about 40% of the whole business. And we are going to do the following things.

First, to serve the agriculture, the rural area, and the rural residents will always be our priority. We are going to have the provision of all kinds of resources to achieve this goal.

And the financing at country level is mainly about credit and focusing on the important agriculture-related projects in the 15th 5-year plan of China, we should know that there are such some realities, like the living condition in the country level is not that good, and there are very large demand for the credit. So, we are going to have targeted policies and measures to deal with the real situation, and we hope our credit and our businesses can solve the real needs of the rural residents.

At the same time, we are going to work with like the government and other industries, especially in terms of the supply chain, the value chain, and the industrial chain of agriculture. And at the technology level aspect of agriculture development, we are going to introduce more policies and technologies to the key counties, and to introduce the key mechanisms of our bank and of the whole economy to the key counties and rural areas.

And at the same time, we will know the exact goals of rural agriculture and rural area and resident development. We will make our efforts to build some products that can serve to the construction of modern rural service center.

And also, we need to follow the strategy of our country. We will make our 15th Five-Year plan to serve the rural area and to apply our policies, strategies, and technologies to our agriculture and country-level service-related programs.

And in terms of integrated service, we are going to have the special financial debt and programs offered to the rural area and agriculture related to the customers to better serve the rural revitalization and the rural residents. And of course, at the same time, we will always stick to the control of risk as our bottom line.

While we are serving the real needs of the rural area, we should always implement the regulations in terms of all kinds of retail and other services, especially we are going to improve our level of supervision of future risks in certain industries. And also, we are going to pay attention to the legal compliance management of programs related to agriculture and rural residents to make sure that the country level economy remains stable.

And at the same time, we are going to improve the mechanism of the agriculture rural area, rural resident department management. Management is always the foundation, and that is very important for us to improve the service quality we can provide for rural revitalization.

And also, we are going to prioritize our country-level business in terms of the policy, resources, and the future plans, including the financing, the human recruitment and the new channel development. And we are going to build more networks at town and country level this year.

We are hoping to have 2,000 more of such points this year. And also, we are going to offer more online services to more county-level business customers.

And also, we are going to use AI and other technology to empower our service for the rural area and the residents and agriculture-related business. And we hope we can improve the experience of our customers.

Now let's invite a question from online participants.

My name is Peter Zhang Yi. I'm from JPMorgan.

I want to congratulate ABC on your performance. My question is about your retail business.

We noticed that you have more than 900 million individual customers and the individual deposit is also achieving a very high level about CNY 3 trillion. So what will be the key of your future individual-related business and retail business?

Thank you for the question. I will give the floor to Mr.

Lin to answer.

Thank you for the question. The retail business has always been the strategic basement foundation of ABC's development.

It is of really, really important position in ABC's overall development. For the first half of the year, ABC have followed this requirement of our party and central government to do the right thing and to achieve the right results and to do the difficult things correctly.

In order to do that, we have 5 priorities in financial services, and that is what we have done. And also, we have promoted the retail business in order to help the development of the internal demand for our economy, and we have provided a very professional and very targeted services, financial services for our agriculture-related customers.

And we have requirement for our retail business. And if briefly sum it up, it is -- we always require that our -- any service related to the agriculture and rural area should make a step forward, should make improvement every day.

I have some discussion with my colleagues. We believe that a step every day is not easy to achieve, and it's not difficult to achieve also.

But if you want to achieve it, you need to know what should be your capability needed, your resources needed to achieve it. You need to make concerted efforts.

You need to say a lot of things, do a lot of things, and to work with a lot of partners in order to achieve that. So for us, to work in the retail business, it is very important, especially for our future high-quality development.

If we look at our statistics until the end of June, the deposit of individual is near CNY 21.3 trillion. And this growth is also very high.

It's near CNY 1 trillion, and that is ranking #1 of all major banks. And we have also achieved CNY 3.95 trillion in the individual loans and increased number, yes.

And that is also helping us to achieve the increment of CNY 309.5 billion, and the balance is also ranking #1 in all counterparties in all other banks. So what we have felt is that behind the 900 million customers, 900 million accounts are 900 million units of families and their trust.

And so this whole number of individual customer amount to the financial assets of them will amount to CNY 25.7 trillion, and that is a really large number. And at the same time, we have the diversified service provided to different groups of people like the elderly customers, the people who gain salary, and the new citizens and different types of customers.

And also the cross-border service is also maintaining a very fast growth at a very high level, and we have achieved 71.1% of physical precious metals sales and also additional and the partnership sales reached also a very high level, 112 and also the AUM values are very high. And if we look at the non-performing loan ratio of individual loans, it is about 1.39%.

That is a relatively low level. So if we look at the quality of asset of the whole retail sector, we can see that we are having a long-term planning, and we are having a stable growth.

And we have always put our customer at the core of our future development. We hope to gain the satisfactory response of our customers.

It is like a test stone for the quality of our service. So for the next step, we are going to further implement like the fourth session of the -- the fourth plenary session of the 20th Central Economic Work Conference and also the Central Committee of the Party's meeting and also other policies, we are going to further optimizing our whole system and to transform our businesses.

So for the retail sector, we have 4 aspects that we need to make progress. The first is that we need to have a very solid foundation for this 900 million customers individual retail service.

And this retail service is covering a very large range of customers. It can be regarded as the most comprehensive, the largest inclusive finance.

So we need to make our most effort to serve our customers to make sure that the development of finance can benefit more customers. And more specifically, we need to have a very solid manner taking to develop the elderly care-related financial service.

And also, we are going to pay more attention to other aspects of social welfare. And the brand of elderly care finance of ABC is called Nong Yin Yanglao, which means the elderly care of Agricultural Bank of China.

And we are going to make our efforts to build a comprehensive system of the elderly care-related financial service in different branches of different areas of the country to provide more people with high-quality elderly care. We will continue to improve the quality of the financial services to the senior population.

We will also help improve the multi-tiered and multi-pillar old-age insurance system and optimize individual pension accounts. One part, one potential, the direct sales financial products and services so that more people can enjoy a quality life in old age.

At the same time, we'll continue to deepen the service platforms such as the Golden Rice Bowl restaurant, actively explore financial innovation in the elderly care scenario and strengthen cooperation with the government, elderly care institutions, elderly care associations, to build an integrated ecosystem of finance and life. Next, we will further refine customer group services with more accurate data labels, customer portraits and more suitable preparation for data package to meet the diverse needs of elder care customers in differentiated manner.

So now the whole bank is fully promoting the one thing after that for individuals, financial convenient services. And we can provide the one-stop scenario.

Also, we can utilize the customer service, the business outlets to facilitate the customer to submit materials and withdraw funds. Also, we use financial services to nourish their fertile soil of the rural revitalization.

In this regard, we will continuously optimize and improve the platform for new scenario services in rural revitalization, and strive to provide door-to-door services for the pioneer team. We have about more than 20,000 pioneer teams serving rural areas who provide door-to-door services, and we will use the strategy to improve the environment.

We also focus on -- we will focus on the one township, one product. We will try to explore.

We find exploring new pathways of rural services. And we have felt very vividly and we realized that the individual loans and business loans, why can rural household loans be achieved?

Overall, they are very stable. The rates are well controlled.

The -- an important reason is that we go deep into the front lines to truly understand the unique features and also the development needs in different regions. That is what we call one county, one product.

Or one town, one product. Or one village, one product.

These are crucial for us to sell in rural household loans and business loans, and they are of great help. Certainly, we should take effective measures to support the development of small and micro enterprises.

We should adhere to benefiting both enterprises and the people and regularly implement the coordination mechanism to support the financing of small and micro enterprises, which we have been in help and support. We should also do a job in the inclusive finance and focusing on parks, wholesale markets, core business districts and other chains to further optimize the service process for customers engaged in scenarios, strengthen the support of technology, and accelerate the empowerment digital operations to better meet the needs of small and micro business owners, including the financial needs of individual businesses.

The second focus is to build the core competitiveness of consumer finance and ignite a new engine for boosting domestic demand. ABC actively responds to the national policies to expand domestic demand and boost the consumption, actively implement the 14th Five-Year Plan for expanding consumption, and the work requirements and the deployment in it.

We will support and expand the consumer financial services as a priority. The first is to expand the coverage of the quality payment services, adhere to the dual approach of scenarios and ecosystems with various consumption scenarios and support will deepen the cooperation with e-commerce platforms, retail enterprises, and carry out various forms of activities to boost the consumption.

In this process, we'll focus on promoting the ecosystem through scenarios, constantly enriching high-frequency scenarios and expanding the type of comprehensive financial services. We will reduce the cost for clients to access services.

At the same time, through high-frequency scenarios, we will drive the low-frequency financial needs, so as to provide the client with a more comprehensive financial service ecosystem that understands them better. Secondly, we will step up personal credit services.

In this regard, on the one hand, we'll stabilize and expand traditional consumption. We'll fully promote the trading credit services focusing on automotives, home appliances and the home improvement sector, and intensify support for scenarios that offer smart electronic products and services.

At the same time, we'll continuously enhance elderly care consumption, focusing on childcare, culture and tourism consumption, providing precise supply in the service consumption area, actively supporting digital consumption and green consumption, and the development of new business scenarios. In this process, we attach great importance to and earnestly implement the consumption loan discount policy of the financial department in accordance with the principles of accuracy, compliance and customer convenience.

We increased the lending of consumption loans and effectively turn the policy dividends of the state into measures to boost the consumption and help people's livelihood. In the first half of this year, the bank's personal housing, consumption loans, and vehicle loans reached CNY 258.9 billion, CNY 1.45 trillion and CNY 2.2 trillion, respectively.

The credit card consumption exceeded CNY 1 trillion, thus ranking among the best in the industry. The third focus is to safeguard the AUM of over CNY 25 trillion and set a new benchmark for wealth management.

In this regard, we will firmly aim for common prosperity and remain true to the role as trusted family financial planners. We'll celebrate -- we will accelerate the high-quality of development of wealth management business of individuals.

From us, Wealth is a brand of ABC Wealth Management. Our pension business is called ABC Pension.

We have decided to name our wealth management business, ABC Wealth. The one focus is on product supply with a continued emphasis on supply-side reform, leveraging the advantage of group synergy and resources integration, adhering to the principle of reasonable expectations and qualify the delivery.

And making efforts through both innovation and the selection to drive the transformation of the Wealth's product show from focusing on category to emphasizing high quality. We aim to create a product matching set that is distinctive and of high quality.

Second, we focus on service innovation to meet the financial management needs of clients throughout their lifestyle -- life cycle, enabling one-stop service and provide a more professional and a warm wealth management experience. Number three is the differentiated advantage.

We will develop our differentiated advantages. We will use digital solutions to gain deeper insights, provide wealth consultation, and build smart asset allocation capabilities so as to provide more accessible services and expand the coverage of wealth management services.

Also, we will further focus on the management of wealth for the customers in rural areas. Fourthly, we will further develop our 30,000 branches, create a better life for everyone.

On the one hand, we will provide integrated services to our clients, adhering to the concept of one client, one bank, and improve our retail business. The first is to strengthen the development of our communities, enterprises and their merchants around our branches and other client groups.

We're building ecosystem financial services at the branch. The second is to rely on platforms such as mobile banking.

And we come to provide convenient financial services to clients who will also improve online services. The third is to actively explore an online to offline integrated digital business model, which is not simply telemarketing.

The essence of our work is to drive with data and precisely understand the needs and the insights of the clients. And come up with the matching products and services or channels to the clients so as to realize the financialization of our bank data assets.

These are 3 assets I think are all playing very important roles. For example, in our third asset, digital operation.

For these young people, they understand technology and science and technology through training. They also understand finance.

Through training, they also understand the very good financial business knowledge. Our good retail branches, large banks, strong banks, one is the data of account management is business performance can probably reach the business performance of 1.2 [ branches ].

We also realize that the construction of these 3 runways for the future development of ABC's retail technology will provide a strong impetus. On the one hand, it is very important that we effectively strengthen the protection of consumers' rights and interests as the fundamental requirement of implementing the political nature of financial work.

We vigorously promote the management, sales and protection of the entire bank. And the construction of the pattern of the entire bank is responsible for consumer protection work.

We spare no effort to build a listening platform and smooth the opinion of customers and the frontline employee and feedback channels. Through this listening platform, our frontline employees and account managers, if they have any work suggestions or work feedback or some opinions, it can be directly pushed to the head office.

The head office has a dedicated team to sort it out, to study and to compose, to adopt reasonable suggestions. At the same time, we will strengthen the resource governance.

The key is to practice the experience of the ideology, system mechanism, management process, system control, and the team quality, and thoroughly trace back to the source of the information data. How many complaints should be in place and address the demands of the people.

We should also insist on innovation and efficiency through online, offline channels to popularize the financial knowledge and enhance the public's financial knowledge, deepen the company's [ big operator ] businesses, and work content. And we, in the future, will, as always, stick to the philosophy of serving the people with financial service, forging core capabilities, demonstrating a sense of responsibility, truly achieving stronger service capability, deeper customer cooperation, lower risk cost, and a more balanced business structure so as to meet the growing need of our customer for a better life.

Thank you very much for the detailed sharing of the plan. And now let's work on the next question.

My question is about inclusive finance. From the annual report, we can see inclusive finance has developed very rapidly and very good, and continue to lead the industry.

I want to ask about, how to repay the development of inclusive finance?

I will invite Governor Wang to answer the question.

Thank you very much for the question. Since the beginning of this year, we utilized the opportunity from the 15th Five-Year Plan to deepen the development strategy of the rural areas, farmers, and to promote the development of the small and medium-sized enterprises.

Inclusive finance work have achieved a remarkable result. In the first half year, inclusive finance loan balance is CNY 4.88 trillion.

And also the increase of CNY 532.2 billion (sic) [ CNY 532.4 billion ] of increase and also a lot of new increase in terms of this SME customer-related inclusive financial services. So for the first step, we are going to do the 4 things.

First of all, we are going to be deeply integrated to the general development of our country's plan, and we are going to follow the guidance of the 15th Five-Year development plan of our economy. Especially we are seizing the opportunity related to the cutting-edge technology development and future industry development, and also the upgrading of traditional industries.

And we are going to focus more on the modernization of certain industries, which will all be the foundation of our innovation for the inclusive financial services. And what we will do is to create these financial services, which are in line with the economic development and the market demand.

And at the same time, we are going to make full use of the policy and monetary tools. This year, there has been new financial tools created by the central government and the central financial and fiscal coordination mechanism, which can promote domestic demand-related policies.

And all other related lists of policies to help the SMEs in terms of subsidies for their loans. And ABC is going to make full use of such policy tools to reduce the risk and to innovate the service related to products and to make the operation process of all businesses more smooth and to expand the development space for inclusive finance.

And at the same time, we are going to also give full play to this mechanism to coordinate the financing of SMEs, and we are going to make full use of this platform, which provide us with the information related to the financing credit of SMEs for the further stable legal compliance development. And also, at the same time, thirdly, we are going to promote the digital development and transformation of inclusive finance.

On the one hand, we are going to promote the in-depth piloting of digital transformation of inclusive financial services. And at the same time, we are on these pilots, we are going to create more high-quality products, which can promote the digital technology-based financial inclusive services.

And at the same time, we need to explore the possibility for us to use like AI agents and other technologies and precisely control the service process and to optimize our business operation and to control the risks. And fourthly, at the same time, we will pay special attention to the control of risks, legal compliance issues and to explore and to carefully study the new policies related to the risk control.

And we will build a group of talents who can help to strengthen the source of all the risk control and to have an online and offline integrated comprehensive system, which can control the risks. And we are going to iterate more newer models of risk control and have a timely supervision and emergency alerting system for us to control the risk.

Looking ahead into the remaining of the year, we are going to have a stable path for us for further development. And we are going to follow the guidance by the supervision organizations to have a stable investment and optimize the structure of development.

In order to achieve that, we are going to improve the inclusive financial system quality, both in terms of its quantity and in terms of its efficiency, which can better stimulate the vitality of the market and improve the high-quality development of the society and people's livelihood.

Thank you, Mr. Wang, for the answer.

Now let's give the floor to another question from a participant online.

I'm from JPMorgan. I'm [ Huang Xiao ].

The question is related to AI. So are there any measures for ABC to apply AI in your businesses?

And for your next step, what will be your main focuses to make efforts to integrate AI more into your future operation?

Thank you for this question related to deepening the use of AI. In fact, since the start of this year, ABC has achieved a lot, especially in the smart banking sector building.

And the smart banking is based on our development of the AI agent and is led by the demand of real programs. And we have continued to improve the use of AI at a large range and at a high quality.

And we have achieved 4 results in 4 aspects. The first of all is we have accelerated the innovation in terms of digital-based development of our businesses.

And we have accelerated a lot of digital-based process and also this whole digital process have helped us to make the operation process more smoothly and help us in the application for credit for our customers. And at the same time, AI is helping us to expand the channel of customers.

We have the 11.2 version of the personal mobile bank for our individual customers and which can provide our users with more scenarios of financial services. By the end of June, our mobile bank users have exceeded 280 million, and that is leading in all banks of China.

And also, we are improving our all kinds of digital operation capabilities for different types of customers. And at the same time, we are using AI for risk control.

For credit-related risks, we pay special attention to the supervision of risk in terms of any kind of inclusive financial services. And also, we have promoted the upgrading -- the smart upgrading of the whole process of inclusive finance and also using AI to empower our process to deal with the risky assets.

And also, we are using AI for more scenarios. And such application involves the entry of our clients into the system, the checking of their background, the risk control and also the risk supervision in the financial process.

And thirdly, at the same time, we have used AI to lower the burden of our branches, especially the foundation level organizations. We have this so-called ABC Cloud, which is the ABC version of OpenCloud.

And this ABC Cloud is helping our staff in all kinds of scenarios, for example, in identifying the green loan and in categorizing different types of loans. And also, we have created this Yiming, which is the AI assistant of ABC.

And we have also created this smart brain, which can help us to identify the situation of a very large range and to deal with the difficulties and to provide the solutions for all kinds of cases in different scenarios. And at the same time, we are using AI in more on-spot situations, like for a lot of businesses related to credit card, they can use AI to call for help and to deal with the situation.

And at the same time, AI is providing us at some very fundamental level, provide us with very fundamental support. Like, AI is giving us very high-quality database and to help us to have the structural transformation of our database and to empower our business operation and also help us to create the knowledge bank of our ABC organization.

And at the same time, we have improved our whole metrics of AI tools. We have introduced DeepSeek, Qianwen and other large language model into our system, which has helped to improve our AI capacity to a trillion level -- trillion data level.

And in our next step, we are going to continue to improve the quality and efficiency of AI agents. We're going to do the following things.

First is to deepen the use of AI agents in all kinds of scenarios and to create a long-term mechanism for us to use the AI agents in different ways. And second, we're going to continue to strengthen the support of AI at a fundamental level.

We are going to use AI to build -- to further build our fundamental brands and to create solutions for all kinds of situations on the cycle of financial service. And thirdly, we should always stick to our bottom line, our red line, which is the risk control.

We will always control the risk related to AI management because the large language models, they are changing so fast that there will be some risks like the black box, the illusions of the AI. We are going to deal with these problems, and we are going to manage the scenarios based on categorization to make sure that AI is stable and controllable.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Wang, for answering the smart banking building of ABC.

Now let's give the floor to this lady on the left.

I'm from 21st Century Economic Newspaper (sic) [ 21st Century Business Herald ]. We found that from the situation of 2025, the total proportion of bond stocking financing has exceeded the loans in terms of the financing for agriculture.

So my question is for ABC, what will be your strategy for your future investment? And what will be the return on investment for, like, securities in the future?

Let's give the floor to Mr. Lin.

Well, thank you for the question. Actually, in terms of the security business of ABC, we can conclude it in the following sentences.

First of all, we have paid much attention to the high-quality development of securities. Secondly is we have always understand that we need to follow the general trend of economic development and have a solid foundation.

And third is we have always improved our trading capacity. And fourthly is that we have expanded our scale of service in terms of investment of securities.

And fifthly is that we have a very high level of revenue contribution made by securities. By the end of June, there is this revenue of CNY 17.85 trillion.

That is a year-on-year growth of CNY 1.5 trillion compared to the previous year. And if you look at the structure, long-term ones, including the 5-year or more bonds have a large proportion.

And the ABC is having a relatively lower cost of holding. And also, we are having a higher level of capacity of lowering the risk and higher capacity potential.

So looking into the second half of the year, we can say that ABC is having a very adequate storage and preparation, and we have a systematic capacity to deal with the risks in the system. And such capacity and preparation can help us to deal with the fluctuation in interest risks.

If we look at the overall market, we have to admit that the entire revenue level is relatively low. And the yield curve for banks is holding -- is showing a very fluctuated one.

And we also know that the holding period of bonds, the appreciate in bond values and the trading opportunities is contributing to increasing the return on bonds investment. So that's our expectation for the coming next year.

And we know this year is the beginning of the 15th Five-Year Plan of our country, and ABC, as the major bank of China and also as the fundamental and most important agriculture-related bank of China, we are going to seize this opportunity, and we are going to make full use of our position as a major bank of China. And we're going to follow the policy, the monetary policy and the fiscal policy of our country, and to improve the efficiency of financial market development.

For our next step, we are going to follow this -- the bank's whole overall plan for the allocation of asset and have a flexible allocation of all kinds of securities and to safeguard this bottom line of security. And there are actually 2 aspects of future security investment that we need to pay attention to.

The first is we need to have this judgment of future possible situations. We need to know that because now there is this outside environment and the geopolitical dangers and also the U.S.

Fed and the EU, they are having all kinds of measures that we need to pay attention to. And for the second half of the year, we need to maintain a relatively stable attitude because the fiscal and monetary policy will remain relatively stable for the second half of the year.

The Fed and the Central Bank of Europe had the possibility of increasing interest rates. And with the overall market volatility and the fluctuation of the housing market will be around the interest rates.

So all this had an impact on our overall operation. First of all, in terms of RMB securities, we will continue to strengthen the evaluation of the security market to improve the refined management.

We also have comprehensive consideration of the indicators in order to establish the main structure and then the type of the market. In terms of the size of the investment, we maintain the relatively positive allocation strategy.

And the growth rate of the security portfolio can be appropriately higher than the growth rate of the entire market. In terms of baseline selection, we choose the neutral maturity strategy in order to control the growth of the portfolio maturity.

Also, we will emphasize the optimization of our task allocation in order to better seize the market fluctuation opportunities and prepare for the dynamic adjustment. The second aspect is that with the fluctuation in overseas markets, we will adhere to a prudent duration and skill strategy and coordinate asset returns and risk prevention control, and steadily carry out investments in overseas bonds.

Thirdly, for offshore RMB securities, we will follow the trend of RMB internationalization, actively carry out the investment in offshore RMB securities, and better serve high-level opening up of finance. This is the first aspect: to strengthen the forward-looking research and steadily carry out the securities investment business.

The second aspect of the strategy is to focus on our main responsibility to empower the real economy, improve the quality and the efficiency. One aspect is to focus on serving the construction of a modern industrial system.

We will increase the support for the implementation of our major national strategies and the development of security capabilities in key areas, with a focus on serving transportation, electricity, and energy, among others, as well as industries vital to the national economy and people's livelihood. In this regard, we'll further increase the allocation of high-quality industrial bonds.

The second is to focus on the 5 key areas of financial services and key areas related to agriculture, rural areas and farmers. We actively issue green bonds, plans for technological innovation, with a focus on increasing support for green finance, scientific and technological innovation, and the industry.

We also increase investment in bonds related to agriculture, rural areas, and farmers, where we increase support for rural entities and banks. Let me give you one example, like the Agricultural Development Bank of China, when they issue bonds, we will maintain an appropriate level of support.

We'll work together to strengthen rural revitalization.

Now, let me give one opportunity to online participants. I will read the question.

ABC has achieved some good results in fintech. What are some good practices?

Recently, private equity investment has become a new force in the market. How does your bank enhance its debt and other finance service capabilities through equity investment?

Let's ask the Vice President, Governor Wang Dajun, to answer the question.

Thank you for the question. Fintech is very important and ranks first among the 5 major articles of finance.

It is an important part of cultivating new productivity, achieving high-level scientific and technological self-reliance and self-improvement, and building a country with strong science and technology and a strong financial country. ABC firmly implements the decisions and arrangements of CPC Central Committee and takes technology or fintech as an important strategic task.

It continues to build a specialized and comprehensive service system, and it strives to improve the quality and efficiency of fintech services. It has served over 260,000 technology enterprises with a loan growth rate of technology enterprises, small and medium technology enterprises leading the industry.

So first of all, I want to set 5 keywords to maintain the feature. The first one is the specialized, the meaning by professional.

The service system is very professional. We have set up a technology type of team at both the head office and branches and established technology fintech service center.

In there has innovation hubs, creating a 3-tier professional organizational structure involving fintech department and specialized branches, and a focus on cultivating a team of professionals who understand the industry, technology and finance. In the first half of the year, we closely followed the national strategy to expand the scope of science and technology innovation centers, achieving full coverage of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, the Yangtze River Delta region, and the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area, as well as the 26 key cities in other regions.

Second, innovative credit policies to adapt to the characteristics of technology-based enterprises, which are high-tech, high-risk and asset light. We've broken through the traditional credit evaluation model and developed differentiated credit products for different life cycle, such as startup, growth and mature period.

Focus on innovation and growth attributes, and take the lead in introducing the guidance of the science and technology finance credit policy. Also, we try to make sure the models are well matching the need of fintech.

Number three is the comprehensive product series across all scenarios. For the entire innovation chain, the entire life cycle of business growth and a host of financial demand scenarios.

The head office and branches are committed to building a full range of from tech talent to tech enterprises, from credit to equity, debt, lease, insurance, and wealth management service system. Also, we have formulated online, offline financial products and services.

For example, the head office launched a convenient online product, Kejie Loan, for small and medium micro tech enterprises. Recently, they innovatively promoted the R&D Loan.

And in Zhejiang, Shanghai and other places, the Token Loan serving AI companies essential, which are widely welcomed by the markets. In the first half of the year, the number of tech companies with loans in the bank exceeded 34,000, ranking among the best in the industry.

Fourthly, an integrated tech innovation ecosystem, guided by the financial needs of tech companies. We focus on leveraging internal and external synergy and build an innovation service ecosystem.

Externally, we've collaborated with government departments, research institutes, venture capital firms, et cetera, to establish an innovation alliance and establish a mechanism for mutual learning and risk-sharing. We upgraded the ABC Chuangda technology financial service solution and thoroughly implemented the requirements of investing early, investing in small businesses, investing for the long term, and investing in hard technology, physics, intelligence, digital platform tools.

We divide AI plus applications -- AI plus financial applications, and focus on building industrial financial service platform. This is our own characteristic.

We will form a modern industrial system in key areas and build an industrial client map. We'll integrate internal and external data from multiple dimensions, embed intelligent evaluation models and achieve a precise client-providing dynamic monitoring.

As for the second question, we know that equity investment can be done through market guidance, sharing best space and leveraging synergy. In fintech, it played a very important role.

In recent years, in accordance with the strategic deployment and a requirement of the regulators, we actively and steadily promote the AIC pilot program and continuously improved investment management capabilities to empower and enhance the quality of technology finance. Specifically, we focus on 3 areas.

First, focus on key areas. We support the industrial development in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, the Yangtze River Delta and the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area.

We strive to achieve full coverage of venture capital, VC fund establishment in the 18 pilot cities. In the first half of the year, several investment projects were accelerated and landed, and a number of projects that have passed the listing review or started listing counseling and the filing of high-quality enterprises have been reserved.

Second, we will focus on the field of hard technology. We will always adhere to the path of specialization and focus on the emerging and the future industries in the 14th Five-Year Plan and the construction of modern industrial system and conduct in-depth research on specific areas, striving to see clearly, invest accurately, invest well and keep up.

Thirdly, we'll focus on investing early, investing small and investing for long term. As the ABC group has extensive channels and a large client base, and it has obvious advantages in inclusive financing and technology finance.

ABC investments can leverage these group advantages to accurately select industrial tracks and recommend high-quality projects for technology companies in the seed and the start-up stages. We provide startup capital and accompany early-stage technology company with patient capital, helping them go through growth cycles and provide integrated services, including equity investment, loan, lease and consulting to help them grow stronger.

During the 15th Five-Year Plan, ABC will continue to focus on technology finance, fintech, making it a top priority in its strategy and focus on supporting technological innovation across the chain, and also build a main force for the development of fintech.

Thank you very much for the sharing of fintech. Now, let's welcome the next question.

My question is about the dividend distribution. Governor Wang introduced that the cash dividend distribution percentage will increase to 31% from 30%, which reflects the importance of ABC attaches to how to stabilize the dividend ratio in the future and better reward investors.

May I try the board secretary to answer that question?

In order to enhance the investor sense of gain, the dividend distribution percentage increased to 31% from 30%. The ABC building (sic) [ Board ] meeting had proposed the distribution of interim dividend for 2026 to all shareholders, which is CNY 1.297 per 10 shares.

Enhancing investors' returns is important requirement of enhancing the resilience and the confidence of the capital market. ABC will further implement the concept of putting investors first.

That's guiding healthy investors returns. And our work mainly focus on the following 3 aspects.

First, we will stay focused on our core business to consolidate the foundation for value return. In recent years, ABC has always taken high-quality development as the main theme and the balance and the scale, quality, and efficiency of development.

Just now, Governor Wang had shared with us that the net profit of ABC had lead in the industry again for 6 consecutive years. And looking into the future, we will have more high-quality services, main business services provided.

And secondly, the second thing we do is that we will have a long-term, high-quality information exposure. We believe this is a very important for our relationship -- our trusted relationship with the investors.

And what we will do is, on the one hand, in terms of the main business information disclosure, like the strategic and financial service information disclosure, we will strengthen the -- yes, we will strengthen what we do in expose more related information. And at the same time, we will have more diversified information disclosed.

And also to respond to the suggestions and the calls of our investors to answer to the market. At the same time, the Agricultural Bank of China will have a sustainable way of development and to safeguard the sustainable value of our investors.

And since the public relisting of ABC of 2021, there has been a 12% and 11% of the A-share and H-share stock of return for investors of ABC. And in 2023, the number have reached 34% and 36%, so that is the number, the statistics.

And at the same time, we have always paid back our investors with high level of dividend. We have remained the level of dividend above 30%, and the whole dividend amount more than RMB 987.2 billion, and that is a stable and sustainable return for our investments.

And we are also going to have more options, like the intermediate profit distribution to its shareholders and other measures. So in the future, we are going to have more diversified ways to maintain this high level of dividend return and the interest return and to share the results of development with all of our investors.

So we have had very thorough discussion today, and due to time limits, we will have the floor open to the last question. Please give the microphone to this madam.

I'm from CICC. I'm Zhang Jingya.

We have noticed that in recent years, ABC is having very good business performance and creating a lot of dividend and return for the shareholders. So behind such great results, there must have been a lot of strategic planning and very efficient implementation of strategies.

So here I would like to ask, what will be the key areas of development for ABC in the 15th Five-Year Plan of China's economy?

Thank you for the question. I'm going to answer your question.

Just as you have said, in the 14th Five-Year Plan, ABC has achieved a very great business performance results. And just as you've said, this has a lot to do with the strategic planning of us at the beginning of the 14th Five-Year Plan period of China and also our precise implementation of this plan.

So in the 15th Five-Year Plan period, we believe this is a very important period for our country's economy to have a solid foundation of economic development and high-quality and speedy economic development. So on this very important time point, we are going to follow the guideline and the policy of our Central Party Committee and our central government.

And the ABC is also having our own 15th Five-Year Plan. We have already submitted that to our Board of Directors for the review.

And during the 15th Five-Year Plan of ABC, according to our plan, we are going to implement the socialism idea with the new era's characteristics, and also to serve the people and to serve the real economy, and to have the reform and innovation as our main driving force, and to follow the guidance of our party and to strictly follow the policies. And our goal is to serve the agriculture, rural area and rural residents and to serve the people and to be a bank of inclusive financial services.

And in this way for China to improve its national capacity with financial development, we want to make our own contribution in this new chapter. So there will be some measures taken.

First of all, we will put the leadership of our party of the political ideas at the center of our development. The leadership of the CPC will be implemented into all steps of our company and our bank's development and management.

The ideas and ideologies will be our tools for high-quality management of our bank. And also anticorruption work is very important for our bank.

We are going to follow the anticorruption measures taken by our party. And at the same time, we are going to stick to our main business.

We will always have this goal of being the leading bank in rural revitalization. And we will put the service of the agriculture, rural residents, rural area in the core of our businesses, and to make our own contribution for the modernization of agriculture and the rural areas.

We will improve the quality of the daily inclusive financial services for agriculture and the rural area. And also, we will have more innovative mechanism for the agriculture and the rural area and also promote the county-level business development steadily.

And at the same time, we are going to be led by the new ideas and patterns of development. And we are going to pay special attention to the key areas and the weak areas and to provide them with enough financial support.

And we are going to improve the 6 network building and to provide the strategic support for the strategic industries. And we are going to give priorities to the 5 main chapters of financial development, and we are going to improve the international development of financial service sector and high-quality development of financial sector.

And in addition, we hope our financial service can help our people. We want to serve the people, and we hope that's because we have the advantage with the widest coverage of customers, and we want to make full use of that advantage to benefit the people and to improve the livelihood of the people and the welfare -- social welfare of the people.

And to provide more diversified financial services to different groups of customers to introduce more diversified financial services and products to every household and to improve the life quality of the Chinese people. And fifthly, we want to build this intelligent bank, smart bank for future high-quality development of our financial services.

We will integrate the AI and other technologies into our existing business and to create a new ecosystem, which human efforts and machine efforts and AI efforts can be coordinated for our digital transformation. And we will have the AI to lead the change in paradigm of our digital finance and to create new competitive advantages for us in the new era.

And sixthly, we will stick to the path of stable development. We will always put the risk control as the main topic of our financial services, put it at the core.

And to create a comprehensive system to innovate the tools and measures to improve our ways for long-term and ahead-looking risk control measures. And we need to improve our new ways of risk control in this new era of technology because new high security level is very important for high-quality development.

And that's our plan. And for the next step, we are going to implement all the plans to put all things into solid work to change, to turn the blueprint into a real scenery.

And to make our own contribution for the 15th Five-Year Plan of our country. And that's my answer.

Thank you very much, Mr. Wang, for the answer.

And ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for your participation in this 2026 interim results announcement of Agricultural Bank of China. And I also want to thank all the investors, analysts and journalists for your long-term attention to ABC's development.

And I also want to thank the direct team. Thank you for -- under the guidance of Mr.

Wang, thank you for sharing with us your experience. So in the future, if you have any further questions, please don't hesitate to ask our team and the department for the information.

And that's the end for today's meeting and today's announcement. Thank you very much.

[Statements in English on this transcript were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]