The Agricultural Bank of China, one of the country’s largest commercial lenders, has pledged stronger financial support for spring farming. The bank said it will strive to issue more than 160 billion yuan (23.48 billion U.S. dollars) in loans for spring farming preparations this year, and will improve the efficiency of financial services. The financial support will focus on large-scale grain growers, family farms and farmers’ cooperatives, among other agricultural entities, the bank said. Moreover, investments registered with the Philippines’ Board of Investments (BOI) in January this year have reached 414 billion pesos (roughly 7.55 billion U.S. dollars), according to data from the Department of Trade and Industry. “It means the government investment body already hit more than 40 percent of the 1 trillion pesos (roughly 18.2 billion dollars) target for 2023,” Trade Undersecretary Ceferino Rodolfo told a forum over the weekend.He said that the BOI-registered investments have already reached close to 60 percent of the 2022 record, referring to the 729 billion pesos (roughly 13.29 billion dollars) investments approved by the BOI in 2022. Rodolfo expressed optimism that the BOI could hit its 1 trillion pesos investment target this year.