China to boost financing for small and micro-sized businesses

BEIJING - The State Council, China's cabinet, on Wednesday unveiled new measures to enhance financing support for private firms as well as small and micro-sized businesses.

Work should be done to ensure increasing financing at lower costs for small and micro-sized businesses, expand employment and spur new growth momentum, according to a statement released after a State Council executive meeting presided over by Premier Li Keqiang.

The meeting called for larger-scale re-loans and re-discounts and speeding up creation of a policy framework for cutting the reserve requirement ratio for medium and small banks.

Additional funds released by the monetary tools shall be used for issuing loans to private firms and small and micro-sized businesses, according to the statement.

The country's top five State-owned commercial banks will take the lead by increasing outstanding loans to small and micro-sized businesses by over 30 percent and cutting financing costs by 1 percentage point this year.

The state financing guarantee fund will support guarantee loans of 200 billion yuan ($30 billion) to serve over 100,000 small and micro-sized businesses in 2019.