Li Yang: Private lending interest rates are not allowed to exceed 20%, which is a lot of problems

Difficult and expensive financing is an eternal problem that plagues the development of small and micro enterprises. In August last year, the Supreme People's Court issued the newly revised Provisions on Several Issues Concerning the Application of Law in the Trial of Private Lending Cases, which made a major adjustment to the upper limit of judicial protection of private lending interest rates, which aroused great concern in the market.

According to the revised regulations, the judicial protection of the private lending rate is capped at 4 times the one-year loan market quoted interest rate (LPR). The latest data released by the central bank shows that on April 20, the one-year LPR was 3.85%, unchanged for 12 consecutive months. Based on this calculation, the current judicial protection ceiling of private lending interest rates is 15.4%, which is a large decrease compared with the previous requirements of 24% of the "red line" and 36% of the "bottom line".

In this regard, Li Yang, chairman of the National Finance and Development Laboratory, said at the Boao Forum a few days ago that the problem is very big. "You don't allow it to exceed 20%, there are a lot of problems, if you don't get into the operation of small and micro enterprises, you won't know why he wants 20% of the annual interest."

Speaking at the "Survival of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises" sub-forum on Sunday, he said that 20% is an annualized interest rate, which translates to less than 2% for one month and even lower for a week. "If it's for consumption, it's a more troublesome thing, whether it's a month or even a week, you bear such a high interest rate of a loan, you are very difficult to pay off." But if it is used for production, the money passes, and after a week the product is produced, and after a week it is sold. ”

Li Yang stressed that the provisions on private lending rates "cannot be so rigid." "We call it the legally tolerated interest rate, 60 percent in Canada, 20 percent in our neighbor Japan, and everybody sees what's going on here."

In his speech, Li Yang also said that the platform economy developed on the basis of the latest technological developments such as the Internet, the Internet of Things, big data, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence may be the most fundamental way to solve the financing difficulties of small and medium-sized enterprises, and it also represents the future of economic development.

He pointed out that the traditional financial system covers at most 20% of the population, 80% of which cannot be covered, but it can be covered by financial technology, and financial technology has played a great role in the new crown epidemic.

"Right now, we're exposed to a wide variety of platforms every day. The platform economy has four characteristics: a high degree of user dependence, accurate matching of information between supply and demand, bilateral network externalities, and large-scale cross-borders. Today, the platform has become the third type of resource allocation method and mechanism juxtaposed with the market and enterprises, which represents the future of economic development. Li Yang said.

He said that in the past, the economy was divided into two types of resource allocation mechanisms, such as enterprises and markets, and in such an environment, communication between enterprises, communication between markets, and communication between enterprises and the market is not easy. After the advent of the platform, these problems were solved.

"The platform directly connects the supply and demand sides together, and the platform is closely related to the latest technological developments such as the Internet and the Internet of Things, and big data and cloud computing." So I have been studying the financing of small and micro enterprises, which is probably the most fundamental way out. ”