China Development Bank (CDB), the nation's biggest policy bank, is planning to give more financial support to the country's small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

The bank will redesign its lending policy and create a platform to facilitate lending and credit guarantee for the SMEs to boost the growth of the sector, which is a most vigorous economic force in China and also the country's biggest provider of employment.

China has not established a sound policy-guided financing system for SMEs, said Liu Kegu, CDB vice-president, at a seminar yesterday in Beijing.

Presently, as a policy bank, most of CDB's loans are granted to the medium and long-term infrastructure projects or the major construction projects in the key industries, such as power, petrol and oil, telecommunications etc.

But in the future, it will also cater to the financial demands of the smaller enterprises and use its financial strength and resources to lead the commercial banks to lend more to these enterprises, Liu said.

For example, CDB can conduct wholesale loans to the SMEs and make use of the local network of the commercial banks to do the settlement. It will also more actively participate in guarantee and other credit intermediary services, through co-operation with the local official guarantee agencies.

And a credit information and evaluation system should be established to record and trace the credit status of the potential borrowers.

Irregularities and poor creditors will be disclosed and face more curbs in lending, while borrowers and regions that operate well with low bad loan ratio can enjoy bigger credit.

Another feasible practice is to launch investment funds, which mainly target equity investment in the SMEs and start-ups, said Liu.

CDB's plan echoes the central bank's call on the domestic banks to increase lending to the SMEs earlier this year. Commercial banks are also adjusting their lending policies to better serve the customers.

Financial institutions are still the major financing resource for the SMEs in China, said Yu Jianguo, a researcher at the Macroeconomic Research Institute of the National Development and Reform Commission.

But the high threshold and traditional bias against the smaller enterprises have often made it hard for them to acquire sufficient loans.

(China Daily August 21, 2003)