ICBC Supports to Small and Medium-sized EnterprisesThe Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) vowed Thursday to render more support to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) through various means.Jiang Jianqing, president of ICBC, said at a meeting that the bank is striving to provide better financial services to small and medium-sized companies, which will benefit ICBC's operation while improving its' credit structure. The bank promised to treat SMEs and large enterprises equally in terms of fund lending, disregarding ownership, size and trade, Jiang said. A better settlement system will be introduced to improve the lending efficiency to SMEs and the procedure will be simplified as well, according to Jiang. High-tech SMEs and SMEs with products supporting large enterprises will be given priority in lending, Jiang noted. Other supporting measures include the establishment of an electronic banking system, improvement of information services and so on. The ICBC currently has 400,000 clients, most of which are SMEs. By the end of last year, the outstanding amount of ICBC's loans to SMEs had added up to 1.2 trillion yuan, over 50 percent of the bank's total. |
| People's Daily Online --- http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/ |