China Merchants Bank plans to step up lending to small businesses to help China tackle the global financial crisis and continue to support the nation’s GDP growth, reported Reuters.
The Shenzhen-based bank said that it would focus on loans of less than CNY5m for domestic SMEs and even relax approval processes for such lending. Reportedly, the bank had set up an SME credit centre to approve small loans without the need to inform every case to head office.
Ma Weihua, CEO, said: “SMEs have become the support pillar of China’s GDP growth. To realize China’s goal of boosting domestic consumption and maintaining economic growth, it is now an urgent task to solve financing problems for SMEs.
“When financing problems for SMEs are solved and SMEs really feel energetic and flexible about doing business, China’s economy can truly get out of the financial crisis. 2010 will bring big opportunities to many SMEs,” reported the news agency.
