The International Finance Corporation (IFC) signed a loan agreement Thursday with Huazheng Agricultural Development Company (HADC), a large private agricultural business in northeast China's Jilin Province.

The IFC, a private sector of the World Bank Group, agreed to pour 22 million US dollars into the Chinese enterprise to help the latter expand pork production, said Javed Hamid, director of IFC Asia I Department.

IFC's loan would be used for HADC to add pig breeding farms, upgrade slaughtering capacity and build new processing facilities to produce ready-to-eat packaged meat, added Hamid.

HADC expects the project to boost local pig-breeding and processing industries, and increase the annual pork production output to 2 billion yuan (about 250 million US dollars).

The IFC started its various investment schemes in the middle of the 1980s, aiming at financing in and introducing overseas international investment for China's medium and small-sized enterprises.

According to statistics from China's Ministry of Finance, IFC's Chinese cooperation partner, the corporation had participated in over 50 Chinese investment projects, injecting about 1.3 billion US dollars by the end of 2002.
 
(Xinhua News Agency August 8, 2003)