Beijing municipal government's State-owned Cultural Assets Administration Center (SOCAAC) on April 23 signed an investment agreement with the first batch of 16 financial institutions -- to launch a risk compensation policy to help fund resident small and micro cultural enterprises, SOCAAC officials said.

They said that asset-light small and micro cultural enterprises had been facing difficulties in financing for a while. The risk compensation policy implemented this time will relieve the worries of financial institutions and help more small and micro cultural enterprises solve their financing problems.

Under the policy, for financial institutions that grant loans to small and micro cultural enterprises, risk compensation provisions will be in place.

Officials said this initiative will encourage financial institutions to keep extending credit lines to these enterprises. At the same time, it can also enhance the credit ratings of small and micro cultural enterprises.

Compared with the same type of support policies at home and abroad, a major innovation of the risk compensation policy introduced by Beijing is that financial institutions themselves also provide part of their own funds and form a fund pool together with government financial funds.

According to the amount of financial institutions' investment, the ratio of government financial contribution is 1:3.

In the event of a risk, financial institutions will receive a maximum compensation rate of 50 percent and a maximum compensation amount of 2 million yuan ($282,400). Officials said it will encourage more financial institutions to increase their investment exposure to Beijing's cultural industry.

In recent years, Beijing has issued a series of support policies to support small and micro cultural enterprises' financing.

Among these, the Investment, Loan & Awarding platform has attracted nearly 20,000 cultural enterprises and more than 1,000 financial investment institutions to register in and formed the largest cultural enterprise database in the country.

Through discounted interest rates and other policies, the development of over 3,000 cultural enterprises on the platform has received financial support, involving over 1.2 billion yuan in funding, officials said.

In addition to the risk compensation policy launched on the platform, Beijing will also build a credit evaluation system for small and micro cultural enterprises, fully open the cultural enterprise database to financial institutions, set up a cultural development fund and cultural creative bank focusing on the cultural industry, and continue to provide policy support for the financing of small and micro cultural enterprises.