Pawnshops reap 'harvest' of economic downturn

Yang Nan was like a cat on a hot tin roof a few months ago because he could not get the money to expand his business.

The Beijing-based businessman needed 400,000 yuan as deposit to open the third restaurant in his chain that sells Xinjiang food. But he felt frustrated because banks would take "too long a time" to approve his loan and he needed the money immediately.

"The threshold for bank loans is too high and the procedure too complicated, and banks could take one to two months to approve a loan," Yang said yesterday. "So I went to a pawnshop instead, and got my apartment mortgaged to get the amount."