The Economic and Information Commission of Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region recently signed an agreement with four local banks in a bid to provide financing for the region's small and medium-sized enterprises.

The agreement will bring a total of 12 billion yuan (US$1.9 billion) of credit to the region's SMEs, which will help them out of financial difficulties.

Statistics show that the region's growing businesses and emerging businesses faced a larger funding pressure in the first quarter due to the decrease in price of some products and increasing raw material costs.

According to a survey initiated by the Commission, those enterprises will face more than 10 billion yuan of financial deficit in 2012.