China Zheshang Bank increases lending to private firms

BEIJING - China Zheshang Bank, one of the country's major joint-stock commercial banks, saw its outstanding loans to private enterprises grow rapidly in the first half of the year.

At the end of June, the Hangzhou-based bank's such loans surpassed 620 billion yuan ($91.7 billion), up 10.42 percent from the beginning of 2020, and accounted for 63.54 percent of the bank's total outstanding loans to firms, the bank's president Xu Renyan said at a press conference in Beijing.

Xu said growth in Zheshang's lending to private businesses outpaced the bank's other kinds of loans. Other examples of the bank's support to the private sector include robust inclusive-financing loans to micro and small businesses, and loan prime rate-linked favorable pricing of bond issuance which had cut financing costs for private firms by over one percentage point.

Xu said the bank will continue to promote innovation in technological applications and business models, and better serve private enterprises and the real economy.