Article/Zhao Jian, columnist of Sina Financial Opinion Leader (WeChat official account kopleader)
The Business Management Department of the People's Bank of China jointly held the "Beijing Private Enterprise Financing Forum". At the symposium, the representatives of 10 banks and securities companies proposed to the financial industry in Beijing to increase the credit supply of private enterprises, and not to draw loans or continue to lend to private enterprises that are temporarily facing liquidity difficulties, but have a market, prospects and competitive technology.
This is the government's voice again in order to ease the liquidity difficulties of private enterprises. In more than a month, the central government has talked about encouraging the development of private economy five times to help the private economy through the temporary crisis.
On November 1, the General Secretary's private enterprise symposium specially listened to the opinions and suggestions of private entrepreneurs, and delivered an important speech on supporting the development and growth of private enterprises. On November 7, in response to the financing difficulties of private enterprises, Guo Shuqing, Chairman of the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, said in an interview with the central media recently that he considered the goal of realizing the "One Two Five Year Plan" for loans to private enterprises. That is to say, among the new corporate loans, the loans from large banks to private enterprises should not be less than 1/3, and that from small and medium-sized banks should not be less than 2/3. Three years later, the loans from the banking industry to private enterprises should account for no less than 50% of the new corporate loans.
The introduction of these policies undoubtedly brings a timely rain to small and medium-sized private enterprises in dire straits. Under the background of industrial structure adjustment and deleveraging, small and medium-sized private enterprises have experienced huge financing pressure. The policy level, through guidance on commercial banks' loan behavior, provides targeted support to small and medium-sized private enterprises, and provides necessary financial support for high-quality private enterprises that need financial support on the premise of ensuring that the overall operational risk of commercial banks is controllable, It can better promote financial support for the real economy.
If the above measures are a one size fits all correction of previous policies, then the goal of establishing "one, two, five" for banks should also be opposed to the emergence of another "one size fits all".
Although the reason for the liquidity crisis of private enterprises is affected by strict financial supervision, it is also the instinctive choice of commercial banks to reduce or refuse to lend to private enterprises, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, during the economic downturn. In addition, there is also a need to identify the quality of private enterprises with liquidity crisis. Some cases are caused by the speculation of private entrepreneurs who used to increase leverage at will to win short-term profits or mismatched terms of short-term loans and long-term investments. This board cannot be completely hit by banks.
By issuing administrative plans and orders, commercial banks are required to lend to private enterprises, which may create greater distortion while playing a certain role In order to meet the dilemma of risk aversion and policy requirements at the same time, commercial banks even caused excessive concentration of credit to high-quality private enterprises that were not short of money, resulting in the adverse phenomenon of channel arbitrage among private enterprises with different credit ratings. Even, it led to the phenomenon of "sustaining" private enterprises in the past. Therefore, in addition to quantitative objectives, this policy is also very important for the quality requirements and control of private enterprises. We understand that commercial banks will not and should not relax the quality of loan enterprises in terms of risk control.
In fact, the problem of the current private economy is not the financial side, but the high social costs: from high taxes, high rents to high human costs (five insurances and one fund), there are also various additional administrative costs. From this perspective, it is better to reduce the tax burden than to provide financing facilities. The resulting fiscal gap can issue special bonds, allowing commercial banks to extend credit lines to private enterprises to purchase these special bonds with the attribute of interest rate bonds. The risk preference is also matched, and effective information screening can be achieved - those private enterprises that can reduce costs and are difficult to survive may not need to add leverage to survive. Private enterprises that generate profits by releasing pressure at the cost end will have better operating efficiency and obtain loans from banks. Of course, those enterprises whose main business is better only because of the cash outflow problem still have to rely on the emergency fund organized by the government. The boundary of the policy should be "saving the poor without saving the emergency", so that the scarce policy resources can be effectively used without any trouble.
After analyzing the problems, we still need to put forward some constructive proposals. The effective implementation of the "One Two Five Year Plan" can start from three aspects: respect the business logic of commercial banks, and effectively identify private enterprises that really need credit.
First, the government or the local People's Bank of China or the regulatory authorities take the lead in setting up a risk compensation fund to increase the credit of private enterprises and connect the risk appetite curve of commercial banks with the risk return curve of private enterprises. That is, through public credit enhancement, the risk return portfolio of private enterprises falls into the feasibility set of banks. In this way, the gap between the credit supply of commercial banks and the demand of private enterprises may be grafted. Many such funds have been established in the past, but none of them have been effectively implemented.
Second, properly handle loans from local platforms and state-owned enterprises to reduce the crowding out of private enterprise credit by these financial rigid assets. Now banks are reluctant to lend to private enterprises, mainly because there are a large number of low-risk and high-yield assets available for investment. If the supply of these assets is reduced, banks seeking profits and scale will be forced to lend to private enterprises.
Third, the local government has organized the establishment of a basic database of private enterprises, and made the data of enterprises such as water, electricity, coal tax and customs open to banks to improve the efficiency of bank credit screening. At the same time, we will vigorously develop third-party financial technology companies serving private enterprises, establish data asset credit for private enterprises that lack tangible asset collateral, realize the screening of effective information, and enable private enterprises that really need credit to obtain credit resources. In a word, this "One Two Five Year Plan" should respect the original wishes of commercial banks in their business operations. Instead of lending for the sake of lending, we should solve the problem from the crux.
(The author of this article introduces: Chief Economist of Xize Capital (Hong Kong), Professor of Business School of Jinan University, Dean of Xize Financial Research Institute, former Chief Economist of Bank of Qingdao and Director of Ping An Bank Research Center.)
