By Zhan Yisi (China Daily)
Updated: 2007-09-15 11:39

"Small businesses are playing an increasingly important role in the nation's economic development," said Liao.

"But they are still in a weaker position in terms of access to bank loans compared with large and medium-sized enterprises, especially the State-owned ones."

"Improving financial services to small businesses and offering more tailored financial products will be a win-win step for both small firms and banks."

Small businesses contribute over one-third of China's annual gross domestic product and have created jobs for 75 percent of the urban population, along with being responsible for 90 percent of new vacancies since the beginning of the 1990s.

"Small firms generally do not meet credit standards set for large and medium-sized enterprises; however, randomly lowering credit standards creates risk for commercial banks," noted Liao, adding that banking institutions need to find a balance between risk and profit.

He said that CBRC's efforts have done much to help the nation's commercial banks set up comparatively independent credit granting mechanisms, from authorization for credit extension, interest rate fixing, accounting, auditing, training, evaluating and awarding, to accountability and disclaiming, as well as credit supervising mechanisms including new credit line standards for small enterprises and sharing of small enterprises' credit reputation among different banking institutions.

Official statistics indicate that loans from commercial banks to small enterprises totaled 5.35 trillion yuan at the end of 2006, up 15.8 percent from the beginning of the same year.

Meanwhile, bad loans accounted for 19.3 percent of the total loans to small firms at the end of last year, down 5.1 percentage points from its beginning.

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