The Agricultural Bank of China (ABC) is close to finalizing a plan with banking regulators to transform it into a joint stock company, according to Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of the People's Bank of China.

Regulators have reached a consensus that the bank will be listed as a whole company, instead of being broken up into smaller units as was previously reported by some media.

The reform will cost an estimated US$100 billion, much more than that of the other three major state-owned commercial banks - the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), the Bank of China (BOC) and the China Construction Bank (CCB), said a senior official with the Central Huijin Investment Company, a major investment arm of the central government.

To prepare for the reform and market listing, the government will have to bail out the bank, which is still plagued by large amounts of non-performing loans, with a huge injection of funds to rectify its balance sheets.

But regulators are still considering various plans for the cash injection, and sources of the financial aid have not been finalized either, China Securities Journal reported on Wednesday.

The ABC is the only one of the "big four" banks that has not yet initiated reforms involving a transition to a joint stock company and market listing.

The bank is believed to have been badly hit by massive lending to the rural sector, with a huge non-performing loan ratio of 24.75 percent at the end of March.

Under a commitment to the World Trade Organization in 2001, China must restructure its major banks by the end of this year, in order to prepare them for the full opening of the country's financial markets to foreign competitors.

(Xinhua News Agency October 19, 2006)