Ping An Digital Economic Research Center (DERC)

Ping An - DERC

Ping An Digital Economic Research Center (DERC) utilizes more than 50 TB of high frequency data points, more than 30 years of historical data and more than 1.5 billion data points to drive research on the “AI + Macro Forecast” and provide insights and methods towards precise macroeconomic trends. 

Ping An DERC is a research center for Ping An Insurance (Group) Company of China, Ltd. (“Ping An”) is a world-leading technology-powered retail financial services group. With over 204 million retail customers and 534 million internet users, Ping An is one of the largest financial services companies in the world.

Economy/ CCP & Business/ Taiwan/ US-China/ EU-China

Ping An Digital Economic Research Center

Zheng Zeng

Macroeconomics

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<p><strong>China SME Financing Report Series Report II by Fudan-Ping An Research Institute for Macroeconomy</strong></p>
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<div>As the coronavirus pandemic keeps worsening outside China and sends shock waves across the global economy, <strong>the central government of China has increased financial support for micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs, or SME for short in this report) following the “Two Sessions” meeting</strong> in May. This includes: (1) reducing loan rates; (2) asking large state-owned banks to increase their lending to small businesses by no-less-than 40% this year; (3) using a re-lending program of RMB400 billion (US$5.8 billion) to incentivize local banks to make unsecured loans to small businesses; and (4) encouraging financial institutions to make concessions of RMB1.5 trillion to all types of companies.</div>
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<strong>However, difficulties in discerning the use of the loans and supervising post-lending funding have led to a dilemma when implementing these relief policies.</strong> On one hand, if SME loan policies are too generous with rates too low and covenants too loose, regulatory arbitrage may arise, with funds flowing to the real estate and capital markets, aggravating resource misallocation and encouraging a pivot away from the real economy. On the other hand, if SME funding costs are too high and issuing conditions too demanding, small businesses may be unwilling to borrow to maintain production and operations, and instead they will lay off employees and reduce investments to deal with the pandemic.</div>
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<div>Evidence suggests that：</div>
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<ul>
<li>Some companies have used loan subsidies granted by local fiscal authorities to <strong>profit from interest margins</strong>.</li>
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<div>Due to increased risks, small businesses are<strong> less willing to borrow</strong> to restore operations in the absence of low-cost loans. </div>
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<p>To ensure relief funds are funneled directly to small businesses in need, and to avoid<br>arbitrage and circular funding, we recommend that all local governments <strong>set up an indicator </strong><strong>system comprising 29 items under five dimensions</strong> to monitor local SME financing, and speed up data integration and information sharing based on the local small and medium enterprise financing platform, precisely measuring the SME financing gap and monitoring the flow of loan funds based on data from multiple sources.</p>
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<blockquote>
<p style="text-align: center;"><strong>Dilemma of SME financing relief policies in Charts</strong></p>
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China SME Financing Report Series Report II by Fudan-Ping An Research Institute for Macroeconomy

As the coronavirus pandemic keeps worsening outside China and sends shock waves across the global economy, the central government of China has increased financial support for micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs, or SME for short in this report) following the “Two Sessions” meeting in May. This includes: (1) reducing loan rates; (2) asking large state-owned banks to increase their lending to small businesses by no-less-than 40% this year; (3) using a re-lending program of RMB400 billion (US$5.8 billion) to incentivize local banks to make unsecured loans to small businesses; and (4) encouraging financial institutions to make concessions of RMB1.5 trillion to all types of companies.



However, difficulties in discerning the use of the loans and supervising post-lending funding have led to a dilemma when implementing these relief policies. On one hand, if SME loan policies are too generous with rates too low and covenants too loose, regulatory arbitrage may arise, with funds flowing to the real estate and capital markets, aggravating resource misallocation and encouraging a pivot away from the real economy. On the other hand, if SME funding costs are too high and issuing conditions too demanding, small businesses may be unwilling to borrow to maintain production and operations, and instead they will lay off employees and reduce investments to deal with the pandemic.


Evidence suggests that：


Some companies have used loan subsidies granted by local fiscal authorities to profit from interest margins.

Due to increased risks, small businesses are less willing to borrow to restore operations in the absence of low-cost loans. 


To ensure relief funds are funneled directly to small businesses in need, and to avoid arbitrage and circular funding, we recommend that all local governments set up an indicator system comprising 29 items under five dimensions to monitor local SME financing, and speed up data integration and information sharing based on the local small and medium enterprise financing platform, precisely measuring the SME financing gap and monitoring the flow of loan funds based on data from multiple sources.



Dilemma of SME financing relief policies in Charts




China: Speeding up Data Integration to Solve the Dilemma of SME Financing Relief Policies