The General Office of the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission ("CBIRC") has recently issued the Circular on Further Enhancing the Efficiency and Quality of Financial Services Offered to Small and Micro Firms in 2019 (the "Circular").
Guided by the ideas of practically increasing the proportion of bank loans in the total amount of financing received by small and micro businesses and helping with the overall reduction in financial costs they bear, the Circular sets objectives in three respects. With regard to the granting of credit loans, among others, it is emphasized that, for inclusive loans offered to small and micro firms(the total amount of credit loans granted for a single firm being CNY10 million or lower), two expected growths, which specifically mean that "the growth rate of such loans will not be slower than that of any other loans" and "the number of businesses granted loans will not be smaller than that for the same period of the last year", will be realized in this year. Five major banks will do their utmost to achieve the goal as a whole of increasing the balance of inclusive loans for small and micro businesses by over 30% compared with the level at the beginning of this year. To this end, the Circular proposes policy requirements as below. The first is urging banks to deepen the building of professional mechanisms; the second is optimizing services in relation to credit loans and the ways in which such services are delivered; and the third is making research into improvements to regulatory policies. Furthermore, the Circular sets out arrangements for moving forward with improving the credit information system, deepening the cooperation between "banks and guarantee companies" and between "banks and insurance companies", among other matters.