Firms related to virus fight get fundraising boost in Shenzhen

As medical technology research and equipment manufacturing firms ramp up efforts to fight the novel coronavirus pneumonia, financial institutions have also played an active role by launching new measures to facilitate fundraising.

The Shenzhen Central Sub-branch of the People's Bank of China has implemented registration reform of foreign debt, enabling nonfinancial firms to directly manage external debt through banks after a one-off total quota registration.

Shenzhen is one of the nation's first pilot cities to implement the policy and bio-tech startup iCarbonX is the first one in the nation to benefit from it. The firm on Monday successfully registered a 600 million yuan foreign loan, which will be used to establish vaccine development and testing platforms for the epidemic.

On Friday, another four companies in Shenzhen successfully registered a total external debt quota of 2 billion yuan, an effort to expand their investment into fighting the epidemic.

The registration regulation is one of six reforms the branch has rolled out on Feb 6 to back up medical research and equipment production during the virus outbreak, as well as bolster Shenzhen's development into a pilot demonstration zone of socialism with Chinese characteristics.

Furthermore, the branch also organized local banks to issue three bonds tailor made for fighting the infection and opened express channels for their approval.

As of Friday, a total amount of 3.1 billion yuan has been raised and the funds have been assigned to hospital construction and medical treatment supply companies, as well as Shenzhen Airlines.