China's AgBank says Q3 net profit up 13 percent

SHANGHAI, Nov 11 (Reuters) - Agricultural Bank of China [ABC.UL], the only big state lender that has yet to float shares, said its third quarter net profit rose 13 percent to 49.7 billion yuan ($7.3 billion), helped by a lending boom as a huge government stimulus shielded China from the worst of the global economic fallout.

AgBank said in a statement on Tuesday that its outstanding loans came to 4.02 trillion yuan as of the end of September, up 30.5 percent from the beginning of the year.

The bank's total non performing loans came to 106.3 billion yuan at the end of September, down 27.3 billion yuan from the beginning of the year, with the bad loan ratio at 2.65 percent, a drop of 1.67 percentage points from the beginning of the year. China's banks extended a record 8.67 trillion yuan in new loans in the January-September period, well ahead of this year's minimum target for 5 trillion yuan, as the government adopted ultra-loose monetary policies to stimulate the world's No.3 economy.

An AgBank executive said in September the bank had not decided on where and when to conduct an initial public offering.

AgBank's restructuring is being widely watched because it would largely complete a decade-long overhaul of China's banking system that has seen the government spend tens of billions of dollars to clean up balance sheets once saddled with bad debt linked to government-directed lending.

The four big state-owned banks are ICBC (0349.HK) (601398.SS), Agricultural Bank of China, Bank of China (3988.HK) (601988.SS) and China Construction Bank (0939.HK) (601939.SS). ($1=6.825 Yuan) (Reporting by Melanie Lee; Editing by Ken Wills)