THE northeastern province of Liaoning is having difficulty raising the money it needs to reform old enterprises and improve infrastructure because of the credit crunch and is turning to overseas investors to fill the gap, according to a provincial official.
One result was that Hongkong-listed company China Strategic Investment was talking with the Northeast Medicine Manufacturing Plant in Shenyang about setting up joint-venture production lines to make vitamin C.
Jiang Delong of the Liaoning Provincial Commission of Foreign Economic Relations and Trade said in Hongkong yesterday that 100 billion yuan (about HK$135 billion at the official rate) was needed for the planned industrial and infrastructure programmes.
Liaoning, one of China's industrial bases, has 26,000 industrial enterprises, 1,062 of which are large and medium-sized state-owned enterprises.
Last year, the province's industrial output was worth 233.4 billion yuan, he said.
''Many unplanned loans were granted by the banking system. Small enterprises could easily borrow the money they wanted if they had connections with bank officials, while large and medium-sized enterprises could not carry out their planned reforms becauseof shortage of funds,'' he said.