BEIJING, June 15 (Xinhua) -- More and more Chinese banks have strengthened their cooperation with foreign banks to give full play of complementary advantages and support the Belt and Road (B&R) Initiative.
By the end of 2017, Bank of China had granted about 100 billion U.S. dollars worth of credit lines to the countries and regions along the B&R routes. China Development Bank had seen its outstanding loans to the B&R countries and regions surpass 110 billion U.S. dollars, with the newly added loans in 2017 amounting to 17.6 billion U.S. dollars.
Foreign banks have also participated in the initiative. Standard Chartered announced that it will join hands with bank consortium to provide no less than 20 billion U.S. dollars worth of financing support for projects related to the B&R by the end of 2020. HSBC’s financial service has covered half of the countries and regions along the B&R routes.
“Chinese banks are relatively weak in international experience while foreign banks boast many overseas branches. They can complement with each other in this regard in order to provide better service for the B&R countries and regions,” said Sam Xu, Head of Transaction Banking at Standard Chartered Bank in China.
According to the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, the Chinese and foreign banks will see much closer cooperation in the future. At present, members under the normalized cooperation mechanism for banks along the Belt and Road routes have expanded to over 50 banks. (Edited by Zhang Yuan, zhangyuan11@xinhua.org)
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