郑州屋顶绿化:中国信贷盛宴结束了China tightening

China’s credit binge is well and truly over. In 2009 and 2010 loan growth exceeded nominal gross domestic product growth by 27 and 9 percentage points, respectively, but so far this year it has merely kept pace. The China Banking Regulatory Commission, moreover, has begun to fret about the risks of a shortage of credit to small and medium-sized enterprises. About time.

中国的信贷盛宴真的结束了。在2009年和2010年，贷款增长分别高出名义国内生产总值(GDP)增长27和9个百分点，但今年迄今贷款增长只是与GDP增长保持同步。与此同时，中国银监会(CBRC)已开始担心中小企业缺乏信贷的风险。确实应该这样。

New loan data for the month of May confirmed a general tightening, albeit following breakneck growth: M2, the broadest measure of money supply, rose by 15.1 per cent, the slowest rate since 2008. Yet it is among China’s SMEs that credit contraction is most keenly felt. As CBRC chairman Liu Mingkang pointed out eight years ago, when explaining why China would rather not implement Basel II standards requiring higher risk weightings for SME loans, companies meeting the Swiss institution’s definition (less than €50m of sales) account for more than 90 per cent of lending lists at some of the nation’s big banks.

5月份的新增贷款数据证实了总体收紧趋势，尽管这是在令人喘不过气的快速增长之后的收紧：M2广义货币供应量增长15.1%，这是自2008年以来最慢的增速。然而，最能切身感受到信贷紧缩的是中国的中小企业。正如中国银监会主席刘明康八年前所指出的（当时他在解释中国为什么宁愿不实施巴塞尔协议II的标准，即对面向中小企业的贷款设置较高的风险权重），按照巴塞尔委员会这个瑞士机构对中小企业的定义（销售额不到5000万欧元的企业），中国一些大银行逾90%的放贷对象是中小企业。

In recent months, many SMEs have been dropped, as banks shrink customer bases to meet the maximum 75 per cent loan-to-deposit ratio. For those customers that remain, moreover, new loans are being priced more expensively: banks are seeking to protect margins eroded by asymmetric actions from the People’s Bank of China, which has raised deposit rates by more than lending rates to reduce savers’ negative real return. Stories abound of missed utilities payments, surges in interest rates in the grey lending markets, and collapses of unregulated credit unions.

近几个月来，随着中国各银行缩小客户基础，以达到75%的贷存比上限，很多中小企业被拒之门外。此外，对那些仍能挤进银行大门的客户来说，新贷款更加昂贵了：在中国央行以更大幅度上调存款利率（而非贷款利率）来削减储蓄者的负值实际回报之际，各银行正寻求保护自己的利润率，抵消央行不对称行动的影响。很多传闻称，企业没有资金支付公用事业费账单，灰色放贷市场利率飙升，以及不受监管的信用合作社倒闭。

Since the formation of the CBRC in 2003, when it relieved the PBoC of its bank supervisory functions, Mr Liu has consistently expressed his commitment to SME lending, describing it as “critical to the overall sound and steady economic growth of the nation.” Now is his chance to prove it.

中国银监会成立于2003年，当时该机构从中国央行手中接过银行监督职能。自那以来，刘明康一直表示他支持对中小企业放贷，称这对中国实现健康稳定的整体经济增长至关重要。现在是他兑现承诺的机会了。