At an executive meeting of the State Council, China's cabinet, a decision was made to launch a number of fiscal, tax and financial policies to support the prevention and control of the epidemic on Feb. 5, on the basis of the various measures already introduced in the early stages of the prevention and control work.

The meeting decided to make good use of the special re-loan policy to support banks to provide preferential interest rate loans to key enterprises, including small and micro enterprises that produce, transport, and sell key medical prevention and control materials and daily necessities.

The financial department will give a 50 percent interest subsidy to ensure that the interest rate on these corporate loans is below 1.6 percent.

Production enterprises are like weapons factories in the fight against the novel coronavirus. Over the past few days, many epidemic prevention-related enterprises have worked overtime to increase production capacity to ensure the supply of frontline materials, which has become the norm for them during this special Spring Festival.

In view of the problems faced by some enterprises, such as insufficient production capacity, rising costs of raw materials and labor, this latest piece of news has arrived just in time.

A number of experts said that increasing credit support for epidemic prevention and control enterprises, including small and micro enterprises, is an important part of winning the war of epidemic prevention and control and safeguarding the long-term social and economic development of China.

Dong Ximiao, a researcher at the National Institution for Finance and Development, a financial think tank under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, pointed out that the credit policy put forward by the National Standing Committee is clear and practical.

"There are two ‘keys’ in the loan targets: key enterprises for the production, transportation and sale of key medical prevention and control materials and daily necessities, including small and micro enterprises,” said Dong.

Experts believe that increasing financial credit support will not only help win the war of prevention and control over the epidemic, but is also particularly important for the long-term economic and social development of China.

Dong Ximiao believes that after the outbreak, the financial industry, especially banking institutions, has taken successive measures to effectively support the prevention and control of the epidemic in terms of capital transfer, credit supply, property donation, and so on.

Dong added that it has boosted the confidence and determination of the whole of society to win the battle of prevention and control of the epidemic, and demonstrated the responsibility and spirit of overcoming the challenge together with the real economy.

Since the outbreak of the epidemic, a series of financial policies aimed at stabilizing the market and expectations has been issued one after another.