Guangzhou Daily: Financial support boosts SMEs' development

The Guangzhou branch of the People's Bank of China and the Guangzhou financial supervision authority recently published a number of suggestions on offering financial support to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), in a bid to help build Guangzhou Science City in Huangpu district into an internationally influential "intelligent manufacturing center in China".

There are currently more than 20,000 private enterprises and SMEs in Huangpu. More than 80 percent of the industrial enterprises above designated size in the district are private enterprises and SMEs, as well as over 80 percent of high-tech enterprises.

An industrial enterprise above designated size refers to one that has an annual operation revenue surpassing 20 million yuan ($3.09 million).

The published suggestions put forward ways to innovate financial products and services around SMEs in the fields of next generation information technology, biomedicine, blockchain, new materials, artificial intelligence and the digital economy. It also supports R&D institutions in providing "equity cooperation + incubation" services for SMEs in strategic emerging industries, as well as creating the "finance + sci-tech innovation talents" service model.

Offline financial services supermarket in Huangpu. [Photo/Guangzhou Daily]

Huangpu has set up the nation's first head office-level technology and finance innovation center of a large commercial bank and the first intellectual property rights (IPR) sub-branch in Guangdong, as well as fund pools for IPR pledge financing risk compensation and credit risk compensation of technology-based SMEs, worth 20 million yuan each.

In August 2020, the district launched two patented IPR securitization products, providing financing of 434 million yuan for 24 technology-based SMEs. From January to September 2020, the district completed patent pledge financing of 1.57 billion yuan, helping 121 sci-tech enterprises, accounting for 43.17 percent of Guangzhou's total and ranking first in the city.

In addition, Huangpu should improve its financial service mechanism for supporting the green development of SMEs, and encourage financial institutions to strengthen cooperation with core enterprises involved in the green supply chain, warehousing and logistics enterprises, and technology platforms, according to the suggestions.

Huangpu should also facilitate cross-border investment and financing of SMEs, offer more financial support for them to integrate into the global industrial chain, and accelerate the domestic sale of commodities originally produced for export.

In December last year, the district took the lead in the pilot project of allowing non-free trade (FT) zone sci-tech enterprises to open an FT account. To date, it has 10 enterprises with FT accounts and 19 enterprises with free trade non-resident (FTN) accounts.

According to the suggestions, Huangpu will provide credit portraits, modeling and rating services for SMEs by relying on the financial service supermarket.

In June 2020, the district opened the first offline "financial service supermarket" store, which integrates various financial service resources in the district like banks, securities, equity investment, financing guarantees, small loans and financial leasing. A total of 50 financial institutions have been introduced to the supermarket, covering over 2,000 high-tech enterprises and releasing more than 200 different types of financial product.

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