BEIJING, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- China CITIC Bank, one of China's commercial banks, has played an important role in supporting private enterprises to "go global" during the Belt and Road construction.
In line with its development strategy, the bank provided a comprehensive financing solution for Chinese enterprises who wanted to expand their business overseas.
In 2017, the loan balance of the bank for cross-border M&A financing exceeded 60 billion yuan，which were mainly granted to key projects such as China National Chemical Corporation (ChemChina)'s 50-billion-U.S. dollar acquisition of Syngenta.
Up to now, the bank has arranged over 3 billion dollars of export credit for projects in 17 countries in Southeast Asia, South Asia, Central Asia, Europe and Africa, said Zhang Xuqing, assistant general manager of the international business division at the bank.
He added that the bank's non-financial letters guarantees for project bidding and contract implementation, have amounted to nearly 3 billion dollars, supporting a number of projects carried out by Chinese-funded enterprises in Egypt, Indonesia, Vietnam, Bangladesh and Pakistan.
The bank has also built up overseas platforms to facilitate the development of Chinese enterprises. It became a shareholder of Kazakhstan's JSC Altyn Bank in June this year; it has also successively established sales outlets in Hong Kong, Macau, New York, Los Angeles and Singapore in recent years.
The CITIC Bank has set up more than 1,000 outlets in key cities along the B&R routes in China. Of the 27 outlets it newly opened in 2017, 18 were built in B&R related cities.
The bank's special fund for the B&R Initiative has so far invested 45.2 billion yuan (about 6.52 billion U.S. dollars) in the infrastructure construction of 13 key cities along the routes in China, such as Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Changsha, Hefei and Hohhot.
On the overseas front, CNCB (Hong Kong) Investment Limited, owned by China CITIC Bank, has also established a B&R fund of 500 million U.S. dollars, which will mainly invest in companies focusing on infrastructure, energy, transportation in ASEAN countries. So far, the fund has completed the first phase of raising 200 million U.S. dollars.
In the future, China CITIC Bank will establish a branch in Hong Kong to help more private enterprises "go out", according to Li Qingping, chairwoman of the bank. (Edited by Li Wenxin, Yang Qi, liwenxin@xinhua.org)
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