Hong Kong orders banks to grant unprecedented six-month loan repayment holiday to help small businesses survive slump
- All 162 banks asked to extend principal payment holiday as well as revolving facilities between May 1 and October 31
- Payment holiday to help sector benefit from HK$1 trillion lending support announced by HKMA
Hong Kong’s monetary authority has instructed all banks in the city to grant a six-month loan repayment holiday to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), in an unprecedented intervention aimed at helping them survive its worst business slump in decades, as the city’s retail, property and services industries struggle to recover from the coronavirus pandemic.
The intervention by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) – the first such by the de facto central bank since its founding in 1993 – comes as SMEs bear the brunt of dwindling cash flow amid the crisis. Any manufacturing business with fewer than 100 employees, or any non-manufacturing business with fewer than 50 people, can be defined as an SME. On Friday, the HKMA asked all 162 banks to extend a holiday from May 1 through October 31 on principal payments on corporate loans, as well as revolving facilities, to their small corporate borrowers. SMEs with shorter term loans will get a break of three months.
The payment holiday is also expected to help the sector benefit from a HK$1 trillion (US$129 billion) lending support the HKMA has made available through several regulatory changes in recent months.
“A six-month payment break is exactly what the SMEs need to solve their credit crunch problems,” said Peter Shiu Ka-fai, the Hong Kong lawmaker representing the wholesale and retail sector. “The HK$800 million threshold is also good enough to cover a wide range of companies. The business sector has lobbied for such measures for sometime, and the HKMA’s new measures will be a lifeline for many small companies,” he said.