On December 6, the 12 th and last stop of the “2013 Beautiful China Tour • Green Finance” of Industrial Bank (IB) came to an end in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.
At the “Beautiful China Tour • Beautiful Prairie – Inner Mongolia Government-Banking-Enterprise Conference on Green Finance”, IB promised to provide green financing of RMB 20 billion during the “12th Five-Year Planning” period, and based on the economic and ecological features of different regions and cities across the region, to customize financial service solutions, so as to boost the region to fulfill the development objectives of “building a national output base for clean energy and an ecological security barrier in North China. Then, in the campaign of the “2013 Beautiful China Tour • Green Finance”, IB has promised to offer special green financing totaling about RMB 300 billion to 12 provinces and municipalities.
It was specified at the 18 th CPC National Congress to build “Beautiful China” and to push “green development, recycling development and low-carbon development”. However, now it still remains at the initial stage for finance to support green transformation. Meanwhile, the demands of green finance vary from area to area due to different regional characteristics and unbalanced development. This requires banks to get to the root of market needs and carry out innovation in green finance.
As indicated by the person-in-charge of the Environment Finance Department of IB Head Office, it is the responsibility of commercial banks, as the most important pivot for the distribution of resources in modern economic system, to lend vigorous support for energy conservation, emission reduction, and the development of low-carbon economy, push the transformation of economic development model and industrial conversion and upgrading in an active way, facilitate the sustainable development of economy and society, and accelerate the construction of “Beautiful China”.
On that basis, IB launched the campaign of “Beautiful China Tour”, which reached 12 provinces and municipalities including Hebei, Shandong, Chongqing, Heilongjiang, Ningbo, Guangzhou, Sichuan, Xinjiang, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangsu and Inner Mongolia, going closer to the regional markets across China, making in-depth industrial survey, listening to the opinions of government agencies and enterprises, serving industrial development, giving ideas on regional transformation.
In the provinces and municipalities that the campaign reached, taking into consideration the advantages of local government, finance and market, IB collaborated with local development and reform commissions, environmental protection departments, emission rights exchanges or key energy conservation and environmental protection enterprises respectively to improve environment financing mechanism and jointly boost the development of local environmental protection cause. The Bank customized green financial service solutions for the 12 provinces and municipalities, provided special green financing to support the construction of local key low-carbon, energy conservation and environmental protection projects, gave priority to arranging the loan scale for key green projects meeting the given requirements, and gave preferential loan conditions, supporting and driving local energy conservation and emission reduction, and pushing the transformation of economic development model and industrial conversion and upgrading with actions.
It is reported that as the first and only “Equator Bank” in China, IB took the lead to develop the business of green finance in China in 2005. Over 8 years, it has built up its first-mover advantages in team building, business model and product innovation and established its leading professional technical team in the industry.
By November 2013, IB has accumulatively provided more than 2,400 enterprises with green finance based financing up to RMB 333.1 billion with a vari ety of financial tools, of which the financing balance amounted to RMB 174.628 billion, achieving a multi-party win-win situation for economic, environmental and social benefits.
In the future, IB indicates, it will support and cultivate the Chinese green industry, guide the green development of enterprises and lead personal green consumption, based on its professional strength in green finance built for years. It will also keep improving its own management level of environmental and social risks, and build an all-course professional financial service supplier covering a wide range and an all-sided “green bank” in the new vast blue sea of green finance.