A recent survey by the National Bureau of
Statistics (NBS), which interviewed 2,434 private enterprises,
shows that it is still difficult for private enterprises to get
loans from banks.
It also finds that about 4 percent of surveyed enterprises have
to borrow usurious loans to supply liquid capital. Currently, the
annual interest rate of usurious loan is about 18 to 25
percent.
Song Yuezheng, head of Enterprise Survey Organization under the
National Bureau of Statistics, affirmed the investigation, despite
more and more attention from both government and financial
institutions. A survey conducted in Zhejiang
Province shows that 45.7 percent of private enterprises regard
the financing difficulty as the main obstacle of private economy
development, while 66.4 percent of them say that it is not easy to
borrow money from financial institutions.
Yang Yumin, another NBS official, attributes the financing
difficulty to the operating system of private enterprises. First,
private enterprises are usually small, and therefore it is hard for
them to resist market risks; Second, they usually need small sums
of money frequently, which will increase lending costs and
supervision difficulties; Third, there's no credit records since
these private enterprises are small or just started up. Also, they
have no sound management system or accounting system, which makes
it difficult to judge the authenticity of information like capital
liquidity and earnings.
The enterprise survey organization suggests that government
should set up an authoritative enterprise credit evaluating
institute, and set up a related enterprise credit system. It is not
appropriate for financial institutions to conduct evaluation work,
considering the huge transaction costs, while more risks will
appear if non-official institutions participate. Therefore, they
recommend the , which is believed to represent the interests of
commercial banks.
(China.org.cn by Tang Fuchun and Daragh Moller, December 26,
2003)