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 People's Bank of China, which is believed to represent the interests of commercial banks.

(China.org.cn by Tang Fuchun and Daragh Moller, December 26, 2003)