I The Current Development
As one of China’s important regional financial centers, Guangzhou has initially shaped the financial organization system containing various types of commercial banks, securities companies, insurance companies and fund companies as the main body, and has established the industrial pattern with the main parts of Huan Shi Dong-Tian He Bei financial cluster, Zhu Jiang New Town-Yuancun financial and commercial circle and the financial innovation service area of Guangzhou Development Zone. In 2009, the Guangzhou’s financial industry realized the added value of RMB 55.332 billion yuan, with the record high year-to-year growth rate of 29 percent. The proportion of the financial added value to the GDP increased by 1.39 percent to 6.07 percent on the year-to-year basis; and the proportion to the added value of the service sector reached up to 9.98 percent, up 2.06 percent, as compared to the previous year.
The financial market steadily takes the leading place in China in terms of scale. At the end of 2009, the domestic and foreign currency deposit balance of Guangzhou financial institutions increased by 23.69 percent to RMB 2.094419 trillion yuan, with an increase of RMB 401.095 billion yuan, compared to the beginning of the year; The loan balance grew by 25.88 percent to RMB 1.385183 trillion yuan, with RMB 284.764 billion yuan higher than that of the beginning of the year. The financial strength was repeatedly ranked as third among the national major cities. The insurance industry achieved the premium income of RMB 32.7 billion yuan; The equity fund turnover reached RMB 4.4699 trillion yuan, the futures and agency turnover, RMB 10.303 trillion yuan, and the property rights market turnover, RMB 49.0 billion yuan, all of which took the national leading place.
Guangzhou has 172 commercial financial institutions and representative offices, including 84 banking institutions, 67 insurance agencies, and 21 securities, futures, and fund institutions. In terms of types of the financial institutions and the outlet density, Guangzhou is also among the leading cities in the country. In 2009 a total of 15 financial institutions were set up in Guangzhou, including five foreign financial institutions and 10 Chinese-funded financial institutions. As of the end of 2009, Guangzhou possessed a total of 78 foreign financial institutions, of which there were 27 branches of foreign banks, 19 foreign insurance companies, 16 foreign bank representative offices, 11 foreign-funded insurance representative offices, one foreign fund subsidiary and four foreign-funded securities representative offices.
The financial business area of Zhujiang New Town has been developed into a base for Guangzhou to build the financial headquarters. Currently, there are already 36 financial regulation agencies and commercial financial institutions settling down in the area, of which five were established in 2009. At present，such financial back-office service and software data companies, financial electronics manufacturing enterprises and venture capital, private equity investment companies as China Construction Bank Intensification Center, Bolon Investment （China） Co.,Ltd, Microsoft, IBM and Intel have all been established at the Guangzhou financial innovation service area.
In 2009, Guangzhou was listed as one of the RMB settlement pilot cities of the national crossborder trade. A breakthrough has been made in establishing new type financial institutions Five small-loan companies have been set up, and two village-town banks and Guangzhou Automobile Finance Company have been approved for prepared establishment. The rapid development has taken place in property rights trading market. Guangzhou Assets and Equity Exchange is the first to set up the country’s first private equity exchange, and Guangzhou Environmental Resource Exchange becomes the first carbon emissions trading platform in South China, and Guangzhou Rural Assets and Equity Exchange has also been established. Now, Guangzhou has been ratified to be one of the second group of IP pilot cities for intellectual property pledge financing business.
II Development Priorities
In 2010, Guangzhou will speed up the preparation of its regional financial center construction and development planning and implementation guidelines, and will amend and improve the supporting policy system concerning the financial industry to strengthen the service function of finance to economy.
Firstly, the publicity and promotion of Guangzhou’s financial industry will be increased to attract domestic and foreign banks, insurance companies, securities companies, fund management companies, financial companies to develop in Guangzhou, with the focus on guiding domestic and foreign financial institutions headquarters and regional headquarters to settle down in the financial business area of Zhujiang New City. Venture capital firms are positively introduced, and accounting firms, law firms, investment advisory, asset valuation, insurance agency, credit rating and other financial intermediary services agencies will be spurred to develop; Secondly, the advantages of high-tech industry innovational vitality and others within the Guangzhou Economic and Technological Development Zone will be taken by speeding up the construction of the Guangzhou financial innovation service area. The financial innovation research and financial business innovation pilots will be carried out to provide support for financial institutions in data processing, data backup, software development, information exchange, telephone banking, bank cards and other financial back-office operations. Besides, other measures have been taken to undertake the international financial institutions outsourcing business, with great efforts to build Guangzhou into the country’s most important industry base of the financial innovation and financial back-office operations processing center; Thirdly, the cooperation of Guangzhou, Hong Kong and Macao in finance and insurance will be enhanced and Hong Kong and Macao financial institutions and supporting financial services organizations will be vigorously introduced. The financial institutions in Hong Kong and Macao are encouraged to set up regional headquarters and financial disaster recovery backup centers, data processing centers and other backup organizations. Hong Kong securities companies meeting certain conditions will be supported to establish joint-venture securities institutions in Guangzhou.
Guangzhou City
