(Yicai) Dec. 26 -- China’s New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor, which links western China with 127 countries and regions worldwide, has recently received strong financial support from eight Chinese government departments, including the central bank, to support its high-quality development.

The 21 new financial policies aim to strengthen the financing and settlement functions of the corridor, which covers 12 provincial-level administrative regions in western China, including the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, the municipality of Chongqing as well as the provinces of Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan provinces.

The corridor also stretches to the southern province of Hainan, the city of Huaihua in central Hunan province and the city of Zhanjiang in southern Guangdong province. It connects 583 ports worldwide and over 1,300 types of goods are transported along it.

The aim is to break regional barriers and to strengthen coordination between finance and the real economy within provinces, across regions and internationally, particularly with ASEAN countries. This will be accomplished through measures such as exploring integrated credit systems among financial institutions along the corridor, establishing joint credit lines and syndicated loans and setting up unified service networks connecting domestic and overseas branches.

Against a complex global geopolitical and economic backdrop, these policies demonstrate China’s commitment to keeping its doors wide open to the rest of the world, Lu Lei, vice governor of the People’s Bank of China, said at a press conference yesterday.

Under the premise of controllable risks, the new policies will provide more efficient settlement as well as financing services for corridor companies going global, said Wang Xin, director of the Research Bureau of the PBOC. For instance, pilot programs may allow multinational firms to set up integrated domestic and foreign currency fund pools and support foreign trade and economic cooperation businesses in yuan settlement.

The Chinese Securities Regulatory Commission will actively support qualified corridor companies in their initial public offerings, refinancing as well as mergers and acquisitions, said Huang Jianshan, deputy director of the commission’s department of bond supervision.

In the first 11 months, the Shanghai, Shenzhen and Beijing stock exchanges helped four companies along the corridor to go public, raising nearly CNY7 billion (USD1 billion). They also assisted 17 listed corridor companies to raise almost CNY25 billion in refinancing.

Editor: Kim Taylor