Recently, the General Office of the State Council issued the Guiding Opinions on Accelerating the Development of the Financial Leasing Industry (hereinafter referred to as the Guiding Opinions), to comprehensively and systematically accelerate the development of the financial leasing industry.
The Guiding Opinions points out that Chinese financial leasing industry has witnessed a considerable development in recent years with its market scale and enterprises competitiveness obviously enhanced. It plays an important role in promoting the innovation and upgrading of the industry, broadening the financing channels for medium, small and micro-sized enterprises, driving the development of emerging industries and bolstering economic structure adjustment.
The Guiding Opinions proposes to stick to the principle of combining market orientation and government supporting, combining development and standard, combining financing and leasing-assets, and combining the domestic and the abroad. It also puts forward the development goal that the market scale and competitiveness of Chinese financial leasing industry should be on the world top list by 2020.
The Guiding Opinions puts forward the main tasks in four aspects. Firstly, reform the system and mechanism that limit the development of financial leasing; streamline administration and delegating power to the lower level, rationalize the industrial management system and optimize the management of related fields. Secondly, speed up the development of financial leasing in major fields; actively promote the transformation and upgrading of the industry, accelerate the financial leasing service of small, medium and micro-sized enterprises and strongly develop the cross-border leasing. Thirdly, support the innovative development of financial leasing; promote the financial leasing companies to create new operation mode, speed up the development of supporting industries of financial leasing and enhance the core competitiveness of financial leasing company. Fourthly, strengthen the simultaneous and afterwards supervision of financial leasing; optimize the industrial supervision mechanism and play the self-discipline role of the industrial organizations.
The Guiding Opinions proposes policies and measures in five aspects. Firstly, build a legalized business environment; study and issue the special legislation of the financial leasing industry, establish and optimize the supervision system of financial leasing companies, and study and set up a standardized registration system of financial leasing assets, in order to create a favorable environment of fair competition. Secondly, optimize the fiscal taxation policy; encourage governments at all level to purchase and provide public service through financial leasing; the actual users who get agricultural machinery through financial leasing could gain purchase subsidies for agricultural machinery; encourage local departments to make efforts to lead the financial leasing companies to strengthen the financing supports to small, medium and micro-sized enterprises through policy instruments such as risk compensation, award and interest subsidy; levy the tax of financial leasing contract according to the tax items of “loan contract”; expand the scale and coverage of the export credit insurance of financial leasing. Thirdly, broaden the financing channels; encourage the financial organizations including banks, insurance, trust and fund to strengthen support to the financial leasing companies; support the domestic-invested financial leasing companies to issue the pilot registration management of foreign debt, encourage the financial leasing companies to carry out the RMB cross-border financing and encourage the commercial banks to support the cross-border financial leasing projects to take advantage of the entrusted loan of foreign exchange reserve; make the research into the financial leasing assets of insurance fund; support the establishment of the industry funds of financial leasing. Fourthly, optimize the public service; set up a unified, standard and comprehensive statistic system and an assessment indicator system for the financial leasing industry; establish the standardization system of the financial leasing industry and formulate the industrial business index. Fifthly, strengthen the building of the talents team; support the qualified colleges and universities to set up majors related to financial leasing; encourage industrial associations to carry out the work including training, textbook compilation, level evaluating, experience sharing and business communication.