China moves to make financing easier for small businesses

BEIJING -- China has stepped up efforts to tackle the financing difficulties of small businesses, accelerating the pace at which it is building credit services platforms.

Li Chunlin, deputy director of the National Development and Reform Commission, on Wednesday told a press conference that the country has established an integrated financing credit services system that provides financial institutions with business information that is registered on any local or national platform.

The system has helped meet the financing demand of money-starved micro, small and medium-sized enterprises, which generally face difficulties securing bank loans due to their lack of collateral and credit data.

At the end of February, Chinese banks had issued 25.1 trillion yuan (3.54 trillion U.S. dollars) in loans through the financing credit services system, including 5.9 trillion yuan in credit loans.

Recently, the State Council issued a plan to strengthen the construction of financing credit services platforms. Per the plan, work will be done to improve China’s credit information collection and sharing mechanism, optimize the national integrated network, integrate local platforms with repetitive functions or inefficient operations into that network, and ensure favorable financial policies reach more small firms.

Ren Yongmei, an official of the People's Bank of China, said that the central bank will improve its financial credit database and make better use of credit data to raise financing convenience for micro, small and medium-sized enterprises.

By March, outstanding inclusive loans issued to micro and small enterprises in China totaled 31.4 trillion yuan, up 21.1 percent year on year and with a growth rate 12 percentage points higher than that of all loans.