(Yicai) July 18 -- Lingang Special Area, a key testing ground for economic and trade policies within the Shanghai Free Trade Zone, has said it will make four more product categories eligible for financial leasing, each of which aligns closely with its strategic industrial priorities.

The added categories are new energy equipment, electric vehicle batteries, intelligent manufacturing equipment, and machine tools, Lingang’s management committee announced yesterday.

Financial leasing, where a business pays a leasing company to use an asset before ultimately taking ownership of it, serves as a medium‑to‑long‑term way to ease corporate cash‑flow pressures and optimize balance sheets.

Six leasing companies -- Agricultural Bank of China Financial Leasing, Bank of Communications Financial Leasing, China Merchants Bank Financial Leasing, Shanghai Pudong Development Bank Financial Leasing, Taiping and Sinopec Financial Leasing, and Yangtze United Financial Leasing -- signed on as the first participants in the expanded program.

Lingang has also opened up the program, widening access to eligible financial leasing companies from all over the country, not just locally.

China has piloted large equipment leasing in its free‑trade zones via special-purpose vehicles since 2010. Since then, the scope has expanded from aircraft and ships to containers, construction machinery, vehicles, computing power facilities, and integrated circuit equipment.

As an international financial hub, Shanghai is home to the largest number of financial leasing firms in the country.

There were more than 1,100 in the city at the end of last year, with combined assets of more than CNY3 trillion (USD417.6 billion), or about 40 percent of China's total, according to official data. Forty-two were registered in Lingang and had assets of CNY50 billion (USD7 billion).

Editor: Futura Costaglione