Pledge made to support 'One Belt One Road'

Bank of China Ltd will accelerate the implementation of its strategies to promote the New Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road initiatives next year.

The bank is planning to extend credit of no less than $20 billion to the "One Belt and One Road" related projects in 2015, and $100 billion over the next three years, in an effort to make it the main financial artery for the initiatives, said Lin Jingzhen, general manager of the bank's corporate banking department in Beijing on Tuesday.

"We believe that the 'One Belt One Road' initiatives are a major national strategy that has both economic and strategic significance," Lin said.

Cheng Jun, general manager of the bank's global trade services department, said the bank is making a thorough analysis of the countries involved with the initiatives by studying their economic and trade relations with China, their goods for export and import, as well as the related Chinese import and export companies.

"By analyzing these countries one by one, we are trying to find how we can help our companies further open the overseas market," Cheng said.

The officials also said the bank will speed up its research and implementation of strategies for Africa and Latin America, and setting strategic targets on organizational structuring, business development and product services for target industries and clients.

During the process, the bank will help transfer China's excess capacity to other countries through project contracts, mergers and acquisitions as well as the establishment of factories.

It will support leading companies in certain industries, which have advantages over their foreign competitors, to better deploy their global layout, Lin said.

Bank of China will also support the expansion of import and export credit, project financing, and shipping, aircraft and lease financing and provide $10 billion in export credit and structure financing to help its clients readjust their capital structure and lower their financing costs.

The bank will follow closely the latest trends in mergers and acquisitions and focus on the nation's strategic acquisition projects as well as cross-border acquisitions initiated by high-quality Chinese private companies and private equity firms.

"We will strive to achieve our target of providing loans to 25 newly signed, cross-border mergers and acquisitions projects worth a total of $10 billion next year," Lin said.

As of Sept 30, Bank of China had supported 1,332 overseas expansion projects by Chinese companies, and promised to offer loans totaling $115.2 billion.

jiangxueqing@chinadaily.com.cn