BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s central bank and financial regulators held a meeting with private enterprises and financial institutions, vowing to increase lending to private enterprises and expand their fundraising channels, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) said on Sunday.
The meeting was held on Friday to study Chinese President Xi Jinping’s speech at a symposium last month attended by some of the country’s biggest private business leaders, the statement said.
PBOC Governor Pan Gongsheng said at Friday’s meeting that the central bank will guide financial institutions to increase investment in the private economy and will adopt an “appropriately loose” monetary policy to maintain ample market liquidity, the official China Securities Journal reported on Sunday.
The central bank “will ensure that the financing costs of private enterprises remain at a low level for a relatively long time in the future, as long as China’s inflationary pressure is not great,” Pan was quoted as saying in the report.
The central bank will create a good macroeconomic, monetary and financial environment for the development of private enterprises, Pan said.
Executives from five Chinese private firms, clothing company Eve Group, carmaker Geely Holdings Group <GEELY.UL>, AI firm SenseTime, courier company YTO Express and Inner Mongolia Yili Industrial Group attended Friday’s meeting, the PBOC said in a statement.
China will guide financial institutions to treat all types of enterprises equally and make efforts to solve the problems of financing difficulties and high financing costs for private enterprises, it said.
The PBOC will work with the National Financial Regulatory Administration and the China Securities Regulatory Commission to issue a policy document on supply chain financing, aimed at helping financial institutions better serve small- and medium-sized enterprises, Pan said.
Financial institutions Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) , the People’s Insurance Company (Group) of China, CITIC Securities and National Financing Guarantee Fund attended the meeting, according to the statement.
China’s Shanghai Stock Exchange said at the meeting it will promote more high-quality private firms to list on Shanghai’s technology board, the China Securities Journal reported.
State lender ICBC also said it will provide no less than 6 trillion yuan ($823.86 billion) of investment and financing to private enterprises over the coming three years, the report said.
The rare symposium held by Xi last month underscores the importance of private sector innovation to help China gain ground in technology amid rising geopolitical tensions between China and the U.S., analysts said.
($1 = 7.2828 Chinese yuan renminbi)
(Reporting by Ziyi Tang, Jenny Wang and Ryan Woo; Editing by William Mallard, Christian Schmollinger and Raju Gopalakrishnan)
