YINCHUAN, April 28 (Xinhua) -- China Construction Bank's branch in Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region has rolled out a new inclusive finance service to give loans to small enterprises if they pay their electricity bills on time.
The service is available to small enterprises which have existed for two years or more. Their electricity bills must be over 100,000 yuan (14,900 U.S. dollars) and the bills must have been paid on time.
Its maturity is one year with an annual interest rate of 5 percent.
The bank launched the service along with the State Grid's Ningxia branch and the corporation's e-commerce platform.
The electricity bills are sufficient evidence of whether a company is performing well. It can be taken as a real, timely and consistent indicator of a company's operations, said Jiang Hao, chief accountant of the State Grid E-commerce Co. Ltd.
"The service's target customers are micro, small and medium-sized enterprises. They can use their good credit records as shown by electricity bills to solve financing problems," Jiang said.
A company in Ningxia that makes polysilicon material has received a 1 million yuan loan from the service, he said.
China's inclusive finance covers services offered by financial institutions to micro-businesses, farmers, those on low-incomes, the disabled and senior citizens.
The loan balance of the inclusive finance sector stood at 13.39 trillion yuan at the end of 2018, up 13.8 percent year on year.
