BEIJING -- China Development Bank on Wednesday inked a cooperative agreement on micro credit with the China Foundation for Poverty Alleviation, or?CFPA, promising to offer 1 billion yuan ($160 million)?in loans to assist the foundation's poverty-relief efforts.

It marks the largest micro-finance loan offered by Chinese banking institutions to date, according to comments made at the signing ceremony.

The cooperation, which will greatly ease the foundation's financing difficulties for micro-credit projects, is expected to help more than 150,000 farmers get out of poverty each year, according to Duan Yingbi, president of the CFPA.

As the country's first bank to grant wholesale loans to the CFPA starting 2006, the CDB has provided 310 million yuan in loans to the CFPA's micro-credit poverty-relief projects, said CDB president Zheng Zhijie.

The CFPA has provided 3.3 billion yuan in micro loans to more than 1.5 million impoverished members of China's population as of September this year, its data showed.

The CDB is one of three Chinese "policy" banks, or banks that have been designated by the government to support the country's medium- and long-term development strategies and policies.