BEIJING, March 6 (Xinhua) -- Chinese banking institutions are pooling their resources and ramping up financial support to the country's battle against the novel coronavirus (COVID-19). The following are some of the latest development and figures.
LIQUIDITY BOOST
-- After the epidemic outbreak, China's financial system has issued 30 financial policies and measures on the epidemic prevention and control work, which have ensured uninterrupted financial services and stabilized market expectations.
-- As of Wednesday noon, Chinese banks had offered credit support of over 1.25 trillion yuan (about 180.4 billion U.S. dollars) to facilitate the resumption of production disrupted by the novel coronavirus epidemic. Meanwhile, banking institutions had donated over 2.27 billion yuan and emergency supplies totaling 10.6 million items.
-- The central bank has set up a special low-cost refinancing facility of 300 billion yuan to provide funds to major national banks and some local corporate banks, giving targeted support to enterprises directly involved in the fight against the epidemic.
-- To help small and medium-sized enterprises, the country's central bank increased the re-lending and re-discount quota by 500 billion yuan last week, with the bulk channeled to small and medium-sized banks to increase their credit support to smaller businesses.
-- In addition, national commercial banks will be encouraged to offer more loans to micro and small firms and work toward lowering the lending rates for such firms from last year's level, while policy banks will add a 350-billion-yuan special credit quota to be issued to micro, small and medium-sized firms at preferential rates.
-- On Feb. 28, the country vowed to guide financial institutions to issue extra low-interest loans totaling 300 billion yuan to self-employed businesses.
ALL HANDS ON DECK
-- As of Monday noon, China's six big commercial banks including the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Agricultural Bank of China, China Construction Bank, Bank of China, Bank of Communications and Postal Savings Bank of China had offered a total of 268.18 billion yuan worth of loans to related firms.
-- The China Development Bank, a development financial institution, had provided loans of about 47.2 billion yuan to related firms for epidemic prevention and control and production as of Monday noon.
-- Meanwhile, the Agricultural Development Bank of China and the Export-Import Bank of China, the country's two policy banks, had granted loans totaling 76.31 billion yuan to related firms.
-- In addition, the country's 12 joint-stock commercial banks including SPD Bank, China Merchants Bank and China CITIC Bank had provided 405 billion yuan of loans in total.
-- As of Thursday noon, the country's 134 urban commercial banks and 18 private banks had all introduced supportive measures, offering credit support of nearly 254 billion yuan to boost the fight on COVID-19 and facilitate work and production resumption. Meanwhile, value of their donations grew to 527 million yuan.
-- Rural credit cooperatives offered loans up to 259.6 billion yuan to support spring farming amid the epidemic as of Thursday noon, and saw an additional 153.7 billion yuan of special-purpose loans issued to related enterprises. Value of their donations reached about 600 million yuan.
-- Village and township banks beefed up their lending, lowered loan interest rates and improved financial services. Besides, the community-level lenders made 28.8 million yuan worth of donations to the epidemic battle as of Thursday noon.
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