Small-mid firms' prosperity—essential for economic vitality

“Small-mid firms are an important sector of economic development in social stability, and the essence of economic vitality. To this we ought to actively promote the growth of small-mid firms in line with objective requirement.” The words are given by Du Jinfu, Vice-director of the People’s Bank of China, at the recent symposium jointly organized by the central bank and the U.K. Embassy in China. Du summarized that the difficult of financial support is one of the bottlenecks hampering the growth of small-mid firms, which becomes very prominent during the world financial crisis. In facing the problem, the central bank has ever worked out practical measures as to increase loan proportion more than before, and would like to learn the experience from other countries in research of financial policy to back up these firms.

Successes have been achieved since July 2006 as the follows: the set-up of credit information archives for small-mid firms, covering the status of tax, environment protection, etc; providing information of these firms for banks and governmental departments on basis of the information system; moreover, various training and educational lectures having been conducted to raise their credit consciousness.  In the meantime, it has seen rapid promotion of service level in financing small-mid firms with incessant perfection of serving system and augmented loans in support of production. By the end of May, the overall credit amount climbed at 15.4 trillion yuna or up 12.9 percent against first months of the year, increased by 1.4 percent higher than average growth rate of the loan to enterprises.

Inefficient environment for raising capital, the flaw of self-quality and the lower level of financial service are the three bottlenecks in financing small-mid firms, the view held by the attendees. To which practical measures ought to be worked out to solve these problems and to give promotion to further growth of small-mid firms.