General Office of the State Council: Encourage enterprises with high credit rating to reduce collateral and guarantee requirements, gradually expand the coverage of credit loans, and increase the proportion of credit loans.

Daily Economic News reporter | Zhou Yifei    Daily Economic News editor | Bi Luming

Recently, the General Office of the State Council issued the “Implementation Plan for Establishing a Comprehensive Corporate Credit Assessment System” (hereinafter referred to as the “Implementation Plan”). Among other things, it stated that credit assessment should better play its supporting role in financing for small and micro enterprises. It encourages enterprises with higher credit assessment grades to reduce requirements for collateral and guarantee, and to gradually expand the coverage of credit loans and increase the proportion of credit loans.

He Ling, Director of the Comprehensive Evaluation Department of the Business Environment Development and Promotion Center under the National Development and Reform Commission, said in a written interview with a reporter from Daily Economic News that the formulation and issuance of the “Implementation Plan” coincides with a key juncture at the beginning of the “15th Five-Year Plan” (its rollout period), which makes it an important institutional arrangement for implementing the “15th Five-Year Plan Outline.” The “Implementation Plan” advances to a new stage in which corporate credit assessment moves from “self-exploration” to “unified and standardized implementation” by systematically designing the institutional framework and operating mechanism of the comprehensive corporate credit assessment system, and by taking twelve measures to address issues such as repeated assessments, fragmented standards, and insufficient protection of rights and interests, thereby continuously injecting credit-driven momentum for high-quality development.

Unified Public Credit Assessment Rules

Private enterprises play an important role in China’s modernized economic system and are an important force for promoting high-quality economic development. However, although there are a large number of private small and micro enterprises, their business stability is relatively weak.

The core of optimizing the business environment is to reduce the institutional transaction costs faced by business entities. He Ling told a reporter from Daily Economic News that the “Implementation Plan” clearly encourages relevant departments, platform enterprises, and others to provide preferential or convenient measures for enterprises with good credit standing. “This means that business entities with good credit will enjoy more credit dividends in financing services, bidding and tendering, administrative approvals, and other areas, significantly reducing institutional transaction costs and creating an atmosphere of ‘credit has value, and good faith brings benefits,’ so that credit-environment optimization can continuously drive the business environment to improve.”

In addition, ununified credit assessment rules are a key reason why risks for enterprises operating across regions increase.

In response, the “Implementation Plan” also proposes improving industry credit assessment coordination mechanisms. Industry competent authorities will incorporate the results of comprehensive public credit assessment into the industry credit assessment indicator system, with specific weights determined according to actual circumstances. For enterprises whose comprehensive public credit assessment result is rated as “D,” the industry credit assessment may not rate them as “A.”

He Ling believes that, guided by standardization and normalization, the “Implementation Plan” will promote nationwide unification of public credit assessment rules. First, unify the basic assessment rules. As a rule, data for public credit assessment indicators should come from public credit information. As a rule, assessment results should be divided into four tiers: “A, B, C, D.” The assessment cycle should be no longer than one year, and assessment rules should be disclosed to the public. With unified rules, enterprises can clearly understand where their credit is “good” and where it is “poor.”

Second, establish a coordination mechanism for assessment results. Incorporate comprehensive public credit assessment results into the industry credit assessment indicator system, and specify that enterprises whose comprehensive public credit assessment is rated as D may not be rated as A in industry credit assessments, effectively preventing the “two separate skins” phenomenon in cross-industry assessment results.

Third, promote coordinated incentives. Encourage relevant departments to provide preferential or convenient measures to enterprises rated as “A” in industry credit assessments, further optimizing the development environment for trustworthy businesses.

Expert: Suggest developing credit products that fit the characteristics of private small and micro enterprises

How to ensure effective implementation of the “Implementation Plan”? He Ling told a reporter from Daily Economic News that the “Implementation Plan” lays out a feasible path for establishing a comprehensive corporate credit assessment system. Its implementation requires close coordination among localities and departments, with a focus on strengthening coordination in three areas.

First, strengthen coordination between government and the market to achieve complementary strengths. The government should play a fundamental role. By leveraging the strengths of public credit assessment—strong authority and wide coverage—it will provide foundational and inclusive credit “benchmark lines.” The market should play its professional role. Based on public credit information, credit reporting institutions and rating agencies add commercial credit information, industry characteristic data, and other inputs to provide diversified and personalized value-added services—for example, developing credit products that fit the characteristics of private small and micro enterprises. To achieve complementary strengths, the key is to promote integrated application of public credit information and market-oriented credit information, so that market institutions can obtain public credit information according to law, and public credit assessment can absorb effective feedback from market-oriented information, forming a virtuous pattern in which the government “sets the stage,” the market “performs,” and complementary strengths reinforce each other.

Second, strengthen coordination between the central and local levels to enhance governance effectiveness. At the national level, the focus is on top-level design and management supervision. The National Development and Reform Commission will establish and improve the comprehensive corporate credit assessment system; industry competent authorities should establish nationwide unified credit assessment rules and indicator frameworks for their industries, conduct comprehensive reviews to identify and clear up improper assessment practices carried out by localities on their own initiative, and strengthen guidance for industry associations and chambers of commerce. Localities should focus on localized application and service optimization. Relying on public credit assessment, they can innovate and cultivate more “credit+” application scenarios, so that credit becomes a “people’s livelihood dividend” that is within reach for enterprises and the public. Through central-local coordination to improve the credit governance system, synchronized resonance between “top-level design” and “grassroots implementation” can be achieved.

Third, strengthen coordination between assessment and application to promote coordinated and efficiency-enhancing outcomes. The vitality of credit assessment lies in application. Only by making assessment results “used and activated” can the incentive-and-constraint role be truly brought into play. Assessment should support application, and public credit assessment should closely align with industry characteristics, regulatory needs, and other factors to comprehensively and objectively reflect whether enterprises comply with laws and regulations and relevant management provisions. Application should feed back into assessment, and the feedback information generated during the application process is an important basis for optimizing assessment rules. For example, if financial institutions find that the actual default rate does not match the ratings, and if regulatory departments find that assessment results deviate from actual risk, a closed-loop feedback mechanism should be established to continuously improve credit assessment in its application, thereby achieving mutual reinforcement between assessment and application and coordinated and efficiency-enhancing results.

Cover image source: Daily Economic News media resource database