In 2023, the Bank responded seriously to the spirit of the Central Financial Work Conference and implemented the Opinions on the Implementation of the Plan to Further Promote the High-quality Development of Inclusive Finance of the State Council. It adhered to the fundamental purpose of serving the real economy, focused on its core tasks and businesses, steadily strengthened credit support for micro and small enterprises, and made efforts to improve the quality and efficiency of its policy-based financial services, so as to promote the high-quality development of inclusive finance business. At the year end of 2023, the outstanding balance of special loans for micro and small foreign trade businesses stood at RMB34.681 billion, with a new disbursement of RMB35.301 billion, serving more than 15,000 micro and small foreign trade businesses with actual import and export transactions. 

Optimizing business models for onlending to micro and small businesses and improving sophisticated management. The Bank has established a risk-sharing model for government-bank cooperation called Yuan Mao Dai, through which local government resources can be injected through the “local government capital pool + policy bank + onlending bank” model to achieve better risk sharing. Furthermore, the Bank strengthened management synergy, improved overall marketing capability and deepened cooperation with leading urban commercial banks, rural commercial banks and major joint-stock banks in the region. It took advantage of the market’s critical window of opportunity to provide credit and gave full play to the counter-cyclical role of policy-based financing. By the end of 2023, the Bank’s outstanding onlending to micro and small businesses stood at RMB176.779 billion, up by 16.17% from the beginning of the year, serving approximately 182,600 micro and small businesses. 

The Bank implemented the new regulatory rules, strengthened the control of the final interest rate for onlending to micro and small businesses and further optimized the interest rate transmission mechanism to promote the gradual reduction of the financing costs of micro and small businesses. It also strengthened compliance and risk management by using technology to monitor the risk status of onlending banks and to standardize the exit process for onlending banks. 

Conducting direct lending to micro and small businesses in a prudent manner consistent with the Bank’s position and functions. The Bank developed supply chain finance and linked its system to a number of third-party platforms to support the transfer of core corporate credit to micro and small enterprises upstream in the industrial chain. The Bank’s inclusive direct lending to micro and small enterprises achieved a year-on-year growth of 23.2%, and the number of micro and small enterprises served by the Bank increased by 65.06% since the beginning of the year. The Bank formulated innovative business solutions and diversified its services for micro and small enterprises. Focusing on cross-border logistics scenarios, the Bank developed a business plan for micro and small enterprises called “Wu Liu Dai (logistics loans)”, which was successfully implemented in Shanghai and Jiangsu Province. The Bank also promoted the integration of direct lending and onlending, and introduced the “Lian He Dai (joint lending)” business plan to explore new ways to develop policy based inclusive finance. The Bank strengthened the research and development of the risk control model for micro and small businesses and optimized its risk control strategies with an emphasis on R&D and the application of the digital credit risk model.