Precise support and services in place for new types of business entities
“The fiscal lever drives financing reform and breaks through the development bottleneck of new agricultural business entities. This step has been taken well!” Recently, when reporters interviewed in multiple agricultural cities and counties in southern and northern Jiangsu, they heard many grassroots officials, especially heads of farmers' professional cooperatives, say this.
A reform that has been “long awaited”
A few days ago, when reporters interviewed in Yancheng, Jiangsu's largest agricultural city, agricultural economic management officials at the city, county and township levels and heads of multiple farmers' professional cooperatives successively provided reporters with such a set of data on the difficulty of agriculture-related loans and financing and the large amount of reverse flow of rural finance——
⟦NL> As one of the 18 prefecture-level cities in China with grain output exceeding 10 billion jin, Yancheng ranks first in the province in the total scale of high-efficiency agriculture. The demand for funds for agricultural and rural economic development is also particularly strong, but loans from the main rural financial channels are pitifully few, and the contradiction of funding bottlenecks restricting the development of farmers' professional cooperatives and other new agricultural business entities is prominent.
For this reason, in 2006, when Yancheng took the lead nationwide in piloting the construction of farmers' mutual fund cooperative organizations, Shuoshi Township in Funing County, which first established a farmers' mutual fund cooperative, had credit unions plus the Agricultural Bank absorb deposits of 110 million yuan that year, but issued loans of only 1/6 of deposits——18 million yuan.
In the same year, the deposit balance of 3 commercial banks in Biancang Township, Tinghu District, Yancheng City was 250 million yuan, and the annual balance of agriculture-related loans was only 30 million yuan; in Fu'an Township, Dongtai City, where the farmers' cooperative economy is prominent, 4 bank outlets absorbed total deposits of more than 1.1 billion yuan that year, and loans issued to rural areas were only about 20 million yuan, or 1/55 of deposits.
The 2013 No. 1 Central Document proposed “innovating financial products and services, giving priority to meeting farmers' credit needs, and increasing credit support for new types of production and operation entities.” In recent years, new agricultural business entities in Jiangsu have developed rapidly, with multiple important indicators ranking among the top in the country, and the funding needs for the development of new agricultural business entities have also become stronger.
In response to factors such as new agricultural business entities having few effective assets, low agricultural returns, and the loan orientation of banks, Jiangsu launched financial products such as “Huinong Loan,” innovated fiscal project support methods, and explored the use of fiscal funds to leverage financial capital to solve the difficulty of loans for the development of new agricultural business entities. The Provincial Department of Finance, together with the Provincial Agricultural Commission, launched an “ice-breaking” reform starting with financing reform for farmers' cooperatives.
In 2013, 20 pilot counties (cities, districts) for farmers' cooperative financing reform across the province persisted in piloting first, pioneering and innovating, and reforming while testing, achieving positive results. As of the end of June this year, Minsheng Bank and Ping An Bank had issued more than 400 million yuan in loans to 359 cooperatives across the province, effectively promoting cooperative development.
Targeted preferential support that is “precisely in place”
Danyang Fuxing Livestock and Poultry Professional Cooperative Union was established in 2009 and is mainly engaged in livestock and poultry breeding, processing, transportation, storage, sales and other production and operation activities. It has formed six major series and 15 varieties, has relatively large funding needs, and the cooperative has no effective assets to use for mortgage loans from banks.
In May last year, they tasted the benefits of the cooperative financing reform pilot for the first time and obtained 1.5 million yuan in financing credit without collateral in just over 10 days. “This solved our urgent need! My fine-cut chicken production line and direct-sale store were smoothly launched.” Xu Furong, chairman of the union, believes that this reform suits the union's current financing needs.
In Donghai County, a pilot for farmers' cooperative financing reform, last year, according to the pilot reform requirements, 49 cooperatives across the county established county-level sub-funds, and 60 cooperatives obtained 40.95 million yuan in “Huinong Loan” funds for this purpose. Cumulative cooperative loans reached more than 70 million yuan, and cooperative members called it “timely rain.”
The county's Laoxianghao Peanut Planting Professional Cooperative obtained 2 million yuan in “Huinong Loan” last year, built a new threshing, screening and frying production line, produced more than 3,000 tons of green pollution-free products annually, achieved sales of more than 46 million yuan, drove cooperative members to expand planting area by 5,110 mu, and increased members' average income by more than 500 yuan.
In order to more precisely support the development of new agricultural business entities, Jiangsu's finance department took the lead, together with provincial-level agricultural authorities, and with provincial financial institutions such as Minsheng Bank, Ping An Bank, Agricultural Bank of China, and Postal Savings Bank, developed five financial products, including Huinong Loan, mutual funds, Jinnong Loan, Funong Loan, and a guarantee fund for leading agricultural enterprises, to promote the healthy development of various new agricultural business entities.