The first month of 2004 witnessed a jump of 126.5 billion yuan (US$15.3 billion) in personal deposits drawn by the Agricultural Bank of China, one of China's four biggest State-owned commercial banks, bank sources announced on February 10.

The remarkable increase, ranked top in China's banking sector, is 46.6 billion yuan (US$5.6 billion) more than the bank's personal deposit growth during the same period last year.

By the end of January 2004, the outstanding personal deposit volume of the Agricultural Bank of China stood at some 1.92 trillion yuan.

The services in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Sichuan, Hubei, Guangdong, Hebei and Hunan provinces made the most contributions to the bank's personal deposit growth, the sources said.