APEC Seminar on SMEs Financing in the Asia-Pacific Region Successfully Held in Shanghai
APEC seminar on “SMEs Financing in the Asia-Pacific Region: Crisis and Countermeasures”, co-sponsored by Ministry of Finance of P. R. China, Department of the Treasury of Australia, Ministry of Finance of Indonesia, Trade and Industry Department of Hong Kong, China, co-organized by Asia-Pacific Finance and Development Center and Asian Development Bank is held from June 8 to 10, 2009 at Shanghai National Accounting Institute.
40 participants from government agencies like ministry of finance and central bank of China, Australia, Burma, Cambodia, Laos PDR, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, and commercial banks as well as international organizations like PECC and ADB took part in the seminar in Shanghai. Besides this face-to-face exchange at the main venue in Shanghai, four Distance Learning Centers from Japan, Vietnam, Sri Lanka and the Philippines also joined the seminar through the videoconferencing system of GDLN of the World Bank Group.
During the three-day lively exchange, participants discussed a lot of topics like SMEs financing amid the global financial crisis, government’s role in promoting SMEs financing, trade financing and equity financing for SMEs amid the crisis, how to promote SMEs financing through institutional, product, and services innovation. Delegates from National Australia Bank, Kasikorn Bank of Thailand, Bank Indonesia, HSBC, China Mingsheng Banking Corp., and China Zheshang Bank shared with participants their respective experience and good practices in small business lending.
Delegates all agree that SMEs play a very important role in economic development, for they provide about 99% of employment and about half of GDP. In the current context, SMEs should play a greater role to secure employment and promote a quick economic recovery. The financing difficulty for SMEs has been a universal issue for all the economies. However, banks are still the main source of financing to SMEs. To expand SMEs’ access to financing and to ultimately solve the problem, greater coordination and cooperation is needed among governments, banks, SMEs and financial intermediaries.
