Ctrip offers staff loans to pay fines

An online travel agency is offering interest-free loans to staff who have to pay social maintenance fees because they break the family planning policy by having more than the permitted number of children.

Ctrip introduced the loans at the start of the year. The company's regulations say each loan should be no more than the central government's drafted social maintenance fees.

The loan should be no more than three times the level of the employee's after-tax income in the previous year, and should not exceed 200,000 yuan ($32,000).

If both parents work at Ctrip, they can apply as a family with a loan limit of 400,000 yuan. The repayment period should be no longer than 120 months.

A national management regulation was introduced at the end of last year to set a standard upper limit for social maintenance fees. Before then, local governments were able to set their own fees.

Based on the average disposable income per household in Shanghai, a family is fined 160,000 yuan if it does not meet the qualifications to have a second child.

"China relaxed its one-child policy, allowing couples to have a second baby if either parent is an only child," Liang Jianzhang, Ctrip's CEO, wrote in a column published on Monday.

"But a large number of Ctrip's employees are not the only child of their families, especially those who do not have the Shanghai household registration or those who were born in the 1970s. We are introducing this loan mainly to give a helping hand to these people.