BEIJING, June 8 -- China will present a draft proposal to restructure Agricultural Bank of China, the weakest of the nation's four biggest state-owned lenders, as early as this month, the central bank said.

A task force will submit the plan after auditing its finances and assessing its management and operations in the first half, said Jiao Jinpu, deputy head of the research department at People's Bank of China, in a live Web broadcast. A bailout of ABC, burdened with 99 billion U.S. dollars of dud loans, may cost the state as much as 140 billion U.S. dollars to meet the central bank's 8 percent minimum capital adequacy requirement, Standard & Poor's estimates. China's Cabinet decided to keep the bank whole rather than break it up, citing a need to preserve financial services for farmers who use its 31,000 branches.

(Source: Shanghai Daily)