Guidelines encourage green lending

BEIJING — The government on Friday introduced new guidelines intended to encourage commercial lenders to facilitate loans to "green" enterprises.

The China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC), the country’s top banking regulator, urged lenders to reduce loans to industries with high energy consumption, high pollution, or excessive capacity, and to increase support for environmentally friendly industries and projects.

It encouraged banks to evaluate, classify, and rate the clients’ environmental and social risks, and to use this evaluation to determine the enterprises’ ratings and their access to credit.

It also urged lenders to improve management of their overseas projects and to make sure that initiators of those projects comply with local environmental, healthcare, and security requirements.

"Green" credit extended by six major commercial banks in China – China Development Bank Corp, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Ltd, Agricultural Bank of China Ltd, Bank of China Ltd, China Construction Bank Corp, and Bank of Communications Co Ltd – exceeded 1.9 trillion yuan by the end of 2011, according to the CBRC.