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Optics Valley sets up special fund to help SMEs

Updated: 2020-06-18 Weibo Weixin Qzone Facebook Twitter More

East Lake High-tech Development Zone -- also known as Optics Valley of China and located in Wuhan, capital city of Central China's Hubei province -- issued interim measures for the management of an emergency fund for re-lending on June 17.

The aim is to provide short-term and low-cost emergency financing for small and medium-sized enterprises and help them to resume production and operations to the maximum extent.

According to zone officials, the initial scale of the re-lending emergency fund is 200 million yuan ($28.23 million) but it will be augmented in later stages in tranches, depending on the growth of business. Officials said the total size of the fund is expected to reach 1 billion yuan within five years.

Officials said the main support targets for the fund are small and medium-sized technology-based enterprises those registered and taxed in the zone and in line with the industrial planning of the zone.

And it plans to provide preferentials to support high-tech enterprises and gazelle enterprises those have participated in COVID-19 epidemic prevention and control measures, or which have been seriously affected by the outbreak.

The fund has appointed Optics Valley Financial Holding Group to be the management organization, with plans for two major initiatives in the first phase: an emergency fund for science and technology guarantee and an emergency fund for science and technology investment.

Since the outbreak of the epidemic, zone authorities have continuously optimized Optics Valley's financial services, supported the return of small and medium-sized technology-based businesses to work and production and actively developed a number of support policies.

At present, it has organized more than 6,000 companies and self-employed businesses to apply for support policies – of which 840 have successfully obtained loans for a total of 6.2 billion yuan.

At the same time, the zone's own online financial services platform is also constantly improving, officials said. After the launch of the re-lending emergency fund-related measures, it will also go online on the platform and accept enterprises' applications.

In addition, the zone has carried out dozens of investment and financing activities, which have helped nearly 80 enterprises obtain credit lines, withdrawals or planned investments of about 800 million yuan.