Wokai Blog: Bank of China & Asian Development Bank partnering up to grow microfinance in China: Wokai China Microfinance Blog

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) reported on Tuesday that it may be linking up with the Bank of China (BoC), China's largest state-owned bank, to support the growth of a number of key industries, including microfinance.

“ADB and BoC foresee several opportunities for enhanced collaboration in important areas over coming years with priorities including climate change and low-carbon development, infrastructure investment, regional trade finance, small- and medium-enterprise (SME) financing, microfinance, joint research and knowledge sharing, and corporate governance and risk management improvement,” said Philip Erquiaga, Director General of ADB’s Private Sector Operations Department.

This would be the 7th technical assistance project that the Asian Development Bank has conducted with the Bank of China.

In terms of microfinance, I find this interesting for a few reasons:

- First, it's great to see the Bank of China's openness to international support in developing the key financial sectors to support sustainable development in China.

- Second, it's interesting to see the initiative to develop these development focused financial sectors coming from the a state-owned financial institution. Since microfinance started 15+ years ago in China, the major pushes to develop the microfinance sector have consistently been promoted by the government through state-owned banks, first the Agriculture Banks, then the Rural Credit Cooperatives, and now the Postal Savings Banks.