The Information Office of the People's Government of Shandong Province held a press conference on December 28. Li Kundao, Deputy Director General of the Shandong Provincial Financial Regulatory Bureau (SPFRB), introduced the bureau's efforts in supporting the ecological and environmental protection industry, as well as the ecological protection and high-quality development of the Yellow River Basin.

As the core of the modern economy, finance plays an increasingly important role in optimizing the allocation of factor resources, and steering and promoting the green transformation of the economy. To support the ecological and environmental protection industry, as well as the ecological protection and high-quality development of the Yellow River Basin, SPFRB has kept improving the quality and efficiency of financial guidance, pressed ahead with enterprise listing, deepened the regional financial reform and leveraged its function as a financial think tank.

Since the beginning of this year, SPFRB has improved the system of financial guidance at the province, city and county levels, and enhanced the evaluation, hierarchical management and online matchmaking of financial guidance, thus significantly improving the quality and efficiency of financial guidance. In terms of supporting the environmental protection industry, SPFRB is working with the Department of Ecology and Environment of Shandong Province to include 3,435 environmental protection enterprises into the scope of financial guidance. To date SPFRB has provided financial guidance to 991 environmental protection enterprises and sought financing of 1.989 billion yuan for 105 enterprises.

In terms of supporting the ecological protection and high-quality development of the Yellow River Basin, SPFRB provided financial guidance to a total of 27,405 enterprises in 9 cities along the Yellow River and sought financing of 249.784 billion yuan for 10,481 enterprises as of late November. Meanwhile, in alignment with the financial guidance system, SPFRB has explored the pilot practice of "financial manager" in 9 industrial parks and 12 towns (townships) in the 9 cities, to provide diverse financial services to grass-roots market entities.

Besides, SPFRB has further improved the mechanism of regular listing cultivation service, established a reserve listing resource pool containing 2,200 enterprises, selected and determined 503 key enterprises for targeted cultivation, among which 239 are in the 9 cities along the Yellow River. Since the beginning of this year, Shandong has sped up enterprise listing, up to 16 companies in the 9 cities have gone public compared to only 10 throughout last year, and positive changes have taken place in the industrial distribution and overall quality of listed companies.

In terms of the regional financial reform, SPFRB have supported Weihai in building a national green finance reform and innovation pilot area. Shandong extended its first marine carbon sink loan and first forestry carbon sink usufruct pledge loan to Weihai, with a total amount of 97 million yuan. Weihai's green loan balance reached 35.21 billion yuan in the first three quarters, up 48.4% year on year. As a key node city in the Yellow River Basin, Jinan has recently been approved by the State Council to build China's first sci-tech innovation finance reform pilot area, which is positive significance to guiding finance in serving sci-tech innovations and the development of the green economy. In the meantime, SPFRB will support Dongying, Binzhou and other cities in pilot innovations in financial support for the ecological protection and high-quality development of the Yellow River Basin.

In addition, SPFRB has pushed for the establishment of a green finance research institute, to conduct research in fields such as financial support for the high-quality development of ecological agriculture, the value realization of ecological products, the green transformation of high-carbon industries and the high-efficiency utilization of water resources in the lower reaches of the Yellow River, thereby providing counseling for government and enterprise decision making. SPFRB has supported Agricultural Bank of China and other entities in exploring green finance to build a green finance service system integrating credit, investment and bond underwriting. SPFRB has worked with relevant departments to select and determine 516 green projects based on the pool of key projects in Shandong's top 10 industries, and guided financial institutions in providing targeted support.