【英语财经】中国扩大小企业和农村信贷 Beijing tries to extend credit lines in the countryside

China has moved to shore up financing guarantees for small businesses and the rural sector in an acknowledgment of their importance to the economy.

Over the past decades, China has seen a population shift from the countryside to the cities, where wages are higher, leading to a decline in the contribution of agriculture to gross domestic product.

Yet the rural economy accounts for a disproportionate number of workers. Add in small businesses, which also tend to be labour-intensive, and these areas do the heavy lifting on employment.

Enter the State Council, which has moved to set up provincial-level re-guarantee companies to shore up financing for the credit guarantee firms that are supposed to help small business access capital in the absence of significant collateral.

Tackling the difficulties of small enterprises and rural firms is an “important measure towards improving targeted macroeconomic policy, promoting business and innovation among people, supporting rural groups as cells within the real economy and achieving a solid basis for the economy”, the State Council said of last week’s move.

Small and micro enterprises and rural companies are starved of credit in China, partly due to the small scale at which they borrow and partly due to their lack of collateral. Many are forced to guarantee each other, creating local rings of mutually guaranteed firms that can cause financial instability if one fails.

The guarantee companies that sprang up to help them access loans are poorly capitalised and often ill-equipped to survive defaults.

Banks that enjoy greater capital strength still view loans to state-owned groups as less risky.

The World Bank said in its July China Economic Update: “Almost a decade after restructuring, state banks have yet to make real progress at commercialising activities. Their lending decisions are still largely based on perceived guarantees and collateral, rather than the intrinsic creditworthiness and cash flow generation capacity of borrowers.”

Lending to small enterprises totalled Rmb16.2tn ($2.6tn) by the end of June, equal to 30 per cent of outstanding corporate loans, according to central bank data. Rural loans totalled Rmb20.7tn, or 22 per cent of all outstanding loans. Only Rmb3.5tn of that total was for agricultural loans, with the rest mostly flowing to rural mortgages and non-agricultural firms in rural areas.

Small enterprises accounted for 150m jobs by the end of 2013, equal to nearly a fifth of total employment, according to official figures. For industrial companies, those with fewer than 300 employees or Rmb20m in annual revenue fall into this category. Together with medium-sized enterprises, small enterprises account for 60 per cent of GDP, 50 per cent of tax revenue, and 80 per cent of urban employment.

Despite its shrinking share of the economy, agriculture remains crucial to jobs, employing 228m last year.

China’s bank regulator has decreed that rural and small enterprise loans must grow faster than total loans each year, but bankers say there are ways to disguise loans to local governments or large firms and rural or small enterprise loans to meet this quota, casting doubt on the figures.

“Rural area businesses find it hard to get loans, and for farmers, it’s even harder,” Ma Wenfeng, of Beijing Orient Agribusiness Consultants, said. “If rural lending takes place under the same conditions as city lending, banks are even less willing. The returns are much smaller.”

Mr Ma estimates that businesses such as poultry or pig breeders, food processors and small construction companies or traders pay real interest rates of up to 20 per cent for shadow loans and other informal financial products.

“There’s no way to invest in the countryside,” he says. “It’s really regrettable.”

中国已采取行动加强面向小企业和农村部门的融资担保，承认二者对经济的重要性。

过去几十年期间，中国人口流动的大方向是从农村到薪资较高的城市，这导致农业对国内生产总值(GDP)的贡献下降。

然而，农村经济的劳动者人数所占的比例较大，再加上劳动密集度往往也较高的小企业，这两个领域担负了解决就业的重任。

因此，中国国务院已着手建立省级再担保机构，由其加强信贷担保机构的资金后盾，后者的职责是帮助小企业在没有重大抵押品的情况下获取资本。

国务院在评述上周出台的举措时表示，解决小企业和农村企业的融资难题“是完善定向调控的重要举措，有利于推动大众创业、万众创新，支持‘三农’以增强实体经济‘细胞’活力，夯实国民经济基础。”

小微企业和农村企业在中国很难获得信贷，这部分是由于他们借款的规模较小，部分则是由于缺乏抵押品。许多企业被迫相互担保，在地方形成环环相扣的相互担保局面，如果某一家公司倒闭，就可能导致金融不稳定。

为帮助企业获取贷款而成立的担保公司资本不充足，往往难以承受违约。

资本实力较强的银行仍然认为，向国企放贷风险较小。

世界银行(World Bank)在7月发表的《中国经济简报》(China Economic Update)中表示：“重组近10年后，国有银行在经营活动商业化方面仍未取得真正进展。它们的贷款决策仍主要基于表面的担保和抵押品，而不是借款人内在的信誉及产生现金流的能力。”

央行数据显示，对小企业的贷款总额在6月底达到16.2万亿元人民币（合2.6万亿美元），相当于未清偿企业贷款的30%。农村贷款总额为20.7万亿元人民币，占全部未清偿贷款的22%。其中只有3.5万亿元人民币是农业贷款，其余大多流向农村的抵押贷款和农村地区的非农企业。

根据官方数字，截至2013年底小企业贡献1.5亿个就业机会，相当于就业总人数的近五分之一。对于工业企业，那些雇员人数少于300、或年营收不到2000万元人民币的企业都属于这一类。若与中型企业放在一起，中小企业占GDP的60%，税收的50%，城镇就业机会的80%。

尽管农业在中国经济所占份额不断缩小，但它对于就业仍至关重要，去年就业人数2.28亿人。

中国的银行监管机构已发布指令，要求农村和小企业贷款的增速每年都必须快于贷款总额的增速，但银行业人士表示，有一些办法可以掩盖发放给地方政府或大企业的贷款，以及农村或小企业贷款，以达到指标，这令人对相关数字感到怀疑。

“农村地区的企业很难获得贷款，而农民获得贷款的难度就更大了，”北京东方艾格农业咨询公司的马文峰表示。 “如果农村放贷与城市放贷的条件相同，银行就更不愿意了。回报要小得多。”

马文峰估计，农村企业如家禽养殖场或养猪场、食品加工企业以及小型建筑公司或贸易商，不得不为影子贷款和其他非正规金融产品支付有时高达20%的实际利率。

“在农村根本没有办法投资，”他说。“情况真的令人遗憾。”

译者/和风