At a work meeting held in OVC on April 18, the ice-breaking campaign is launched to help local small and medium-sized sci-tech enterprises gain their first loans. [Photo/WeChat account of Optics Valley of China]

The East Lake High-tech Development Zone (also known as the Optics Valley of China, or OVC) is currently home to 120,000 enterprises. The loan balance of sci-tech enterprises based in the valley accounts for nearly one third of Hubei province's total.

On April 18, OVC rolled out an ice-breaking campaign to implement its targeted action plan to assist small and medium-sized sci-tech enterprises in getting their first loans and gradually establishing credit records.

Leaders of the Wuhan Branch of the People's Bank of China, the Hubei Banking and Insurance Regulatory Bureau, the Hubei Branch of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, as well as officials from eight local financial institutions were invited on the day to conduct themed discussions.

Ten attending sci-tech enterprises signed "first loan" cooperation agreements with related banks.

In the next three years, OVC will strive to increase the number of such enterprises every year by more than 1,000. It will also issue loans of no less than 5 billion yuan ($728 million) for companies seeking their first loans every year. In this way, the number of firms with a credit history will exceed 10,000, and the total volume of loans and deposits in the valley will surpass 1 trillion yuan.

OVC has gathered 121 banking institutions, 65 insurance companies, 34 securities firms, and over 1,200 equity Investment Institutions.

Last year, the valley's total deposit and loan scale reached 600 billion yuan, seven companies went public, and about 7 billion yuan in funds were collected through IPOs. Now, the number of listed companies in the OVC stands at 60, accounting for more than one third of the province's total.