General

Expanding cross-border financing channels for enterprises, increasing export credit insurance support, optimizing exchange rate hedging and cross-border RMB settlement services... At present, a series of financial policies are being implemented at an accelerated pace to help foreign trade enterprises reduce costs, maintain orders, and stabilize expectations.

Stabilizing foreign trade concerns the overall economic situation. While continuously introducing policies to stabilize foreign trade, it is necessary to further strengthen the implementation. "Next, we will continue to strengthen financial support for foreign trade and foreign investment, focusing on optimizing the cross-border RMB business policy." Li Bin, director of the Macro-Prudential Administration of the People's Bank of China, said that multiple measures should be taken to help stabilize the fundamentals of foreign trade.

Financing support is reinvigorated

The latest data shows that in May, the total import and export of goods increased by 9.6% year-on-year, and the growth rate was 9.5 percentage points faster than the previous month. At the same time, it should be noted that my country's foreign trade still faces some challenges. Wang Shouwen, vice minister of commerce and deputy representative of international trade negotiations, said that there are a series of uncertain factors in my country's foreign trade: the price of raw materials has risen sharply; the recovery of the world economy is fragile and demand growth is slow; Expenditures on foreign trade products.

Since the beginning of this year, some foreign trade enterprises, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, have been hindered in production and operation, and their financial pressure has increased sharply. The "Opinions on Promoting the Stability and Quality Improvement of Foreign Trade" issued by the General Office of the State Council clearly stated that it is necessary to increase export credit support. Loan pressure to meet the reasonable capital needs of enterprises.

"Financing support needs to be strengthened." Liao Lin, President of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, said that ICBC will give precise support to key groups such as foreign trade and foreign investment, and "take all loans, fast loans and early loans" for reasonable financing needs.

The financing of foreign trade enterprises is special, that is, the domestic and international markets "walk on two legs". During the interview, the reporter found that the overseas subsidiaries of large and medium-sized enterprises are more likely to obtain overseas financing. They usually rely on the parent company of the domestic group to obtain overseas financing in the form of "overseas loan with domestic guarantee". However, small and medium-sized enterprises generally lack this advantage. It is difficult to borrow foreign debts.

In order to allow enterprises to make better use of two markets and two resources, the pilot program of cross-border financing facilitation has recently been expanded. "The number of pilot areas has increased to 17, covering 80% of the country's high-tech and 'specialized, special and new' enterprises," said Wang Chunying, deputy director of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange.

Steady reduction in operating costs

Financing costs, exchange rate hedging costs, shipping costs... Only when operating costs are reduced can benefits increase and foreign trade companies have endogenous dynamism.

Currently, financing costs have dropped to the lowest level ever recorded. "Since the end of last year, the market quotation rate LPR of loans with a maturity of 1 year and a maturity of more than 5 years has been reduced by 15 basis points and 20 basis points, respectively, guiding the continuous decline of loan interest rates." Zhou Yu, head of the International Department of the Central Bank, said that from January to April this year The corporate loan interest rate was 4.39% in March, a further decrease of 0.22 percentage points from the whole of last year.

It is worth noting that the cost of exchange rate hedging has made many foreign trade companies "anxious". "We used a spot trading strategy before, where we followed the market and made unilateral bets. However, under the influence of the complex and severe international situation, the two-way fluctuation of the RMB exchange rate has increased. If we still follow the old method, then the financial cost and management pressure will rise sharply. ." Lai Yanni, a financial officer of Zhejiang Hanshun International Trade Co., Ltd., told reporters.

Reducing exchange rate hedging costs is a top priority. As a major foreign trade province, Zhejiang Province has issued relevant policies to exempt deposits for exchange rate hedging business handled by small and micro enterprises under government financing guarantees. "On this basis, Zheshang Bank will give full discounts to the transaction exchange rate according to the cost price." Guo Feng, the financial director of a daily necessities import and export company in Jiaxing, Zhejiang, said that a forward settlement of 600,000 euros was discounted by 15,000 yuan. , it is expected to increase nearly 120,000 yuan in foreign exchange gains throughout the year.

There is another "coup" to reduce exchange rate risks and exchange costs - foreign trade and foreign-invested enterprises use RMB in cross-border trade and investment. At present, the scale of RMB settlement is steadily expanding. In the first four months of this year, the cross-border RMB receipts and payments for trade in goods totaled 2.2 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 26%. "Next, we must continue to optimize the RMB settlement environment for cross-border trade and investment." Li Bin said. At the same time, according to the deployment of the State Council, higher-level trade and investment RMB settlement facilitation pilot projects will also be carried out in an orderly manner.

Development expectations are more stable

To make foreign trade companies dare to take orders and produce, they must stabilize their expectations and reduce their risk concerns. From the perspective of international practice, export credit insurance policies are the most common. The "Opinions on Promoting the Stability and Quality Improvement of Foreign Trade" clearly stated that it is necessary to increase the support of export credit insurance and expand the scale of short-term insurance of export credit insurance.

At present, my country's foreign trade enterprises are generally faced with four types of common risks: refusal by importers to pay, high international shipping costs, difficulty in financing for small, medium and micro enterprises, and rising risks of "going out". Among them, the risk of foreign exchange collection is more prominent. From the perspective of general trade exports, many factors such as the individual business status and credit status of overseas buyers, the monetary policy environment of other countries, and regulatory adjustments will affect the security of foreign exchange collection by Chinese-funded enterprises.

Export credit insurance has two major functions, one is risk protection, and the other is financing credit enhancement. Only by eliminating risk concerns and having financial support can foreign trade enterprises enhance their confidence in receiving orders and stabilize their development expectations. "Ninety percent of the companies we serve are small and medium-sized enterprises," said Wang Tingke, president of PICC. In addition, as the main channel for export credit insurance, China Export & Credit Insurance Corporation's underwriting scale has exceeded 350 billion US dollars by the end of May this year, a year-on-year increase of 12.7%, serving 149,000 foreign trade enterprises.

Risk protection also "matches the wire" for financing. Because foreign trade enterprises face many risks, commercial banks are often reluctant to lend to them. However, if an insurance institution underwrites the company's overseas orders and overseas investment projects, the bank can lend on this basis. Once the loan cannot be repaid, the insurance institution will Fulfill debt repayment obligations. As a result, the enthusiasm of all parties has been mobilized, and the scale of policy financing has continued to expand.

"Next, we should encourage banks to strengthen their connection with export credit insurance agencies." Li Xingqian, director of the Department of Foreign Trade of the Ministry of Commerce, said that through "government + bank + insurance" and other methods, foreign trade enterprises will be provided with greater financing convenience and enhance the ability of enterprises to open up the market. confidence.