In order to curb inflation, China once again asked banks to set aside more reserve funds, which is the eighth time since last June 165438+ 10. Although there is little sign that this will curb prices, there are fears that it will further deprive struggling small enterprises of their ability to obtain capital.
Small and medium-sized enterprises in Jiangsu and Zhejiang are crying "very hurt", financing difficulties, rising raw materials, RMB appreciation and shortage of migrant workers ... Industry insiders said that small and medium-sized enterprises are facing a crisis of cost pressure, or some enterprises will stop production or stop production. If vicious price competition expands and the policy superposition effect appears, small and medium-sized housing enterprises will quickly withdraw from the market. By then, local finance will be even tighter, and unemployment pressure will follow.
According to Wen Wei Po, since the beginning of this year, the cumulative effect of continuous regulation of monetary policy has gradually emerged. The reporter also noticed that the continuous increase of the deposit reserve ratio and the control of the annual credit line have made the loan amount of commercial banks tight, and many enterprises and individuals have sought private lending funds, which has led to a general increase in private lending interest rates, and recently there has even been an annual interest rate as high as 100%.
Due to the tightening of bank funds, the private lending market in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Guangdong, where there are many small and medium-sized enterprises, has been extremely hot this year, even with a monthly interest rate as high as 10%. The staff of an investment company in Guangzhou told reporters that if collateral is used as a secured loan, the monthly interest rate of the loan is 2.6% to 2.8%. If there is no mortgage loan, the monthly interest rate is 7% to 10%.
China is a financial system with credit banks as the main body, and the assets of credit banks account for about 80% of our financial assets. From the perspective of risk avoidance, it is the instinct of banks to love the poor and the rich, and to seek the big and abandon the small. The narrow financing channels make the financing of small and medium-sized enterprises only "Huashan Road". Without formal loans, usury will be rampant. Therefore, small and medium-sized enterprises usually face the problem of "ischemia" and will be the first victims in the implementation of austerity policies.
If you don't borrow money, you can't start the machine. You can't pay interest if you borrow money. Industry regulation and barriers prevent private enterprises from using limited funds in profitable places. Closing the door became the last resort.
It is not difficult to see that this move by the state in regulating prices has really hurt small and medium-sized enterprises. More importantly, if we sort out some important economic laws, regulations or related policies promulgated by the state in recent years, it seems that the needs and interests of small and medium-sized enterprises have become forgotten corners, and may even be ignored every time.
Small and medium-sized enterprises are saddened. Why do I always get hurt?
Labor contract law: piling up labor costs
The implementation of the new labor law seems to make small and medium-sized enterprises feel heavy, because the development of small and medium-sized enterprises in recent years depends on low labor costs. The end of the era of cheap labor means death without qualitative change for an industry that is not rigorous enough and a large number of enterprises that are not formal enough. Therefore, the promulgation of labor law is beneficial to enterprises in the long run, but it has brought a series of difficulties and problems to enterprises, especially small and medium-sized enterprises in the short term, which needs to be further improved in the actual implementation process.
After the implementation of the Labor Contract Law for a period of time, some deep-seated problems have been exposed one after another: there are great differences in the understanding of relevant provisions of the law between enterprises and employees, the difficulty of enterprise management has increased, the enthusiasm of employees has decreased, and the benefits of enterprises have been affected. The labor contract law is conducive to stabilizing various labor contract relationships and ensuring the long-term development of enterprises. The labor contract law generally implements lenient entry and strict exit for enterprises and lenient entry and exit for employees. After the implementation, many private enterprises face a series of contradictions and difficulties.
Chen Yongjie, director of the research office of the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce, said that the labor contract law is mainly aimed at medium-sized enterprises with a certain scale, and the average size of more than 5.6 million small and medium-sized enterprises in China is only 12, so it is impossible to adopt strict contract and wage system for these enterprises.
Most small and medium-sized enterprises in China are engaged in productive services or consumer services. On the one hand, they are small in scale and unstable in business and income, so they need to win customers by extending service hours and providing more thoughtful services. On the other hand, their business is often that they don't have much time to go to work but they can't close the door, and they are very busy after work. They objectively need to adopt a flexible employment system and wage system. The new labor contract law does not consider the actual situation of small and medium-sized enterprises. This makes most small and medium-sized enterprises in a dilemma, or strictly enforce the new labor contract law, which not only increases costs, but also has less flexible business hours than in the past; Either close the door and increase unemployment for the society.
To this end, Chen Yongjie suggested that the labor contract system should be implemented in an orderly manner according to the characteristics of enterprises, and a more flexible and concise contract system should be implemented for the classification of seasonal and temporary employees and self-employed individuals in small enterprises.
In the past, the employment cost of small and medium-sized enterprises was low, and one of the important reasons was that they were flexible in employment, and they did not pay insurance premiums or paid less insurance premiums, so their wages were relatively high. Now the situation has also changed a lot. Take the small and medium-sized enterprises (8.75, -0.04 and -0.46%) in Zhongguancun Science Park as an example. Last year, most of their employees' salaries were paid in two parts, half or one third on the salary card, and social insurance was paid for their employees according to this base, and the rest was paid in cash. But this practice doesn't work now.
However, after the implementation of the new labor contract law, these people's high wages cannot be reduced. Instead, they have to pay taxes according to their high wages and pay about 50% of the "five insurances and one gold". Because relatively high wages are written into labor contracts, enterprises also need to pay social insurance premiums truthfully. As a result, the labor cost of small and medium-sized enterprises has increased by about 30% (taking the salary of 5,000 yuan as an example, insurance was paid according to 2,000 yuan in the past, but now it needs to be paid according to 5,000 yuan, that is, it needs to pay 3,000 yuan more insurance, that is, it needs to pay more 1500 yuan). This makes the total cost of enterprises with higher labor costs, such as software, textile and other high-tech enterprises and service industries increase more. The operational difficulties brought about by the rising labor costs of these enterprises will be difficult to digest in a short time and will gradually become prominent through the closure of enterprises.
Compared with state-owned units, small and medium-sized enterprises now have to pay not only higher wages but also the same proportion of insurance fees, which makes the labor cost of small and medium-sized enterprises not only not lower than that of state-owned units, but also higher than that of state-owned units. After the implementation of the new labor contract law, the low-cost advantage of small and medium-sized enterprises has also disappeared.
Exchange rate change: export blocked
In July 2005, the Bank of China (3.360, 0.00, 0.00%) announced that it would abandon the exchange rate mechanism of RMB pegged to the US dollar and implement a managed floating exchange rate system based on market supply and demand and with reference to a basket of currencies. As a result, a more flexible RMB exchange rate mechanism has been formed, which has had a far-reaching impact on China enterprises, especially small and medium-sized enterprises. At present, small and medium-sized enterprises occupy a very important position in China's foreign trade. However, small and medium-sized enterprises are called "vulnerable groups" by some economists because of their low profits and shortage of foreign exchange funds.
The sudden acceleration of RMB appreciation has caused a sharp increase in pressure on many small and medium-sized enterprises engaged in export processing trade. Professor Teng Tai, chief economist of Minsheng Securities, pointed out in 20 10: "In the next five years, the exchange rate of US dollar against RMB is expected to reach 1: 5." Unexpectedly, this statement was verified immediately in the second year. Statistics show that since 20 1 1 year, the RMB has appreciated by 1.97% against the US dollar, especially since April, and the rate of appreciation has obviously accelerated, and now it has broken 6.5, showing a continuous upward trend.
According to the survey, the orders of most small and medium-sized enterprises have increased compared with last year, but their profits have dropped significantly. Due to the decline in efficiency, even some small and medium-sized business owners use enterprises as financing platforms to misappropriate credit funds for real estate speculation or real estate development. Analysts believe that if the exchange rate of the US dollar continues to fall and the RMB appreciates further, a large number of small and medium-sized enterprises will close down in Zhejiang, a foreign trade province dominated by low-end manufacturing.
By analyzing the export transactions, most enterprises are not optimistic, and even some enterprises have the phenomenon of "pushing orders". The exchange rate is constantly changing, and we dare not sign some big orders. "The person in charge of a small gift making enterprise in Yiwu said that although the order volume this year has increased compared with last year, the exchange rate problem still bothers him.
Li Guorong, Secretary-General of Wenzhou Hardware Chamber of Commerce, said that for the rapid appreciation of RMB, the response measures of enterprises are related to their scale. Large enterprises will have specific plans, while small enterprises are very passive and can only "follow the market".
With the acceleration of RMB appreciation against the US dollar, some small and medium-sized enterprises feel unprecedented pressure to survive. The period of foreign trade orders from receiving orders to delivery payment is generally 2~5 months, and exchange rate change is the most sensitive factor. Take an order of1000000 USD as an example. If the exchange rate of USD against RMB is 1:6.8 at the time of signing and 1:6.6 at the time of delivery, the profit will be reduced by 200,000 yuan. The original total profit of this order was only over 300,000 RMB. Affected by the appreciation of RMB, the production and operation costs of enterprises have further increased.
According to a document provided by Xu Xiaojie, vice president of Zhejiang Aokang Group, taking ordinary women's shoes with ex-factory price of $ 15 as an example, from 2006 to 2008, the price of raw materials rose from $ 10.05 to $ 10.85, the labor cost rose from $2.23 to $3.3, and the cost of water, electricity and logistics rose from 0./kloc. Even if the export unit price rose to $65,438 +06.2, the gross profit of this pair of shoes dropped from $65,438 +0. 1 to $0.7. Coupled with the continuous appreciation of RMB, the profit decreased by 0.29 USD and the export tax rebate decreased by 0.3 USD. The pre-tax profit of a pair of shoes decreased from $65,438+0.2 in 2006 to $0.265,438+0 in 2008.
According to the research results of the Banking Research Center of the Central University of Finance and Economics, about 57% of small and medium-sized export enterprises have a profit rate after tax of less than 5%. If the RMB appreciates by 3%~5%, these enterprises will be in a state of meager profit loss. Li Daokui (Weibo column), a member of the Monetary Policy Committee of the Central Bank, said that the RMB exchange rate is only a tool for China's economic restructuring, and China will reduce its dependence on external demand and enhance the support of domestic demand for economic development. Li Daokui said that in the next few years, trade protectionism against emerging economies such as China will continue to rise, and monetary pressure against the RMB will continue to emerge.
Moreover, the adjustment of export tax rebate policy also makes a large number of small and medium-sized foreign trade enterprises face the danger of being eliminated, along with large and small factories facing overseas markets. Experts believe that if the government does not introduce supporting policies such as funds and taxes to help enterprises transform, it will be difficult to tide over the difficulties of tightening export policies only by relying on the funds, technology and talents of small and medium-sized enterprises in the domestic "two high-tech and one capital" industries.
Whenever the state takes measures to "suppress exports", some small and medium-sized enterprises that rely on exports find it incomprehensible and unacceptable: what should those enterprises established under the call and encouragement of the government do? Due to the long-term control of foreign trade and the demand for talents in foreign trade industry, there are a large number of professional foreign trade companies in China. They accept orders from foreign customers and then buy products from factories in China, from which they earn the difference and export tax rebates. Most of the time, these companies are small in scale, and a dozen people can export millions of dollars every month. These foreign trade companies are most sensitive to the adjustment of export tax rebates.
Before the introduction of the export tax rebate adjustment plan, relevant government departments will collect relevant information and send it to enterprises for reference. However, only large state-owned enterprises can enter the government's sight, and small and medium-sized enterprises, especially private small and medium-sized enterprises, are at a disadvantage from the beginning in the era of frequent policy adjustments. Foreign trade enterprises pay more attention to export tax rebate than production enterprises. Because in industries with low profits, this is probably all their profits. At the same time, for the signed contract, the losses caused by the change of tax refund can only be borne by the foreign trade company itself.
Since foreign trade companies are not directly engaged in production, they can only offset the increased costs by raising prices and lowering factory quotations. For small and medium-sized enterprises that export by themselves, although the situation is better than that of foreign trade companies, it is still not optimistic.
"4 trillion plan": squeezing space in disguise
In 2009, with the severe impact of the growing international financial crisis on the world economy, China's economy began to fall into an embattled predicament. In the face of the crisis, the government has formulated ten major measures and a two-year stimulus plan of 4 trillion yuan, which gradually kicked off the largest investment and construction in China.
After the 4 trillion yuan investment decision was issued, how to cut the "cake" became the focus of social attention. Although the 4 trillion yuan economic stimulus plan and the ten major industrial restructuring and revitalization plans have brought confidence to China enterprises. However, as the cornerstone of China's economic development and prosperity, SMEs seem to have been forgotten by the policy.
Although people generally expect the investment plan of 4 trillion yuan, they often hear business owners talk about economic stimulus plans, such as "looking at flowers in the fog and looking at the moon in the water", and they are still somewhat confused about this unprecedented combination of economic stimulus and the utility and distribution of 4 trillion yuan. Most of the 4 trillion stimulus plans and industrial plans were given to large and medium-sized state-owned enterprises, while small and medium-sized enterprises and private enterprises rarely enjoyed the benefits of this round of policies.
In this regard, many economists said that fiscal expansion to stimulate the economy "can only save lives, not strengthen the body", and it is understandable and necessary to take special measures in special periods. However, if we hope to revitalize China's economy with frequent and large doses of "cardiotonic", the fundamental problem will be difficult to solve after all.
Now, in the face of the financial crisis and the double pressure of banks "sparing loans and collecting loans", many small and medium-sized enterprises feel as if they have spent the cold winter. Business owners said that the role of banks is more "icing on the cake" than "providing timely help". When the economic situation is good, banks often take the initiative to "send loans" to enterprises. When the situation is tense, it becomes a "tight purse". An entrepreneur bluntly said: "At present, the relationship between SMEs and banks is subtle, and enterprises are at an obvious disadvantage, which makes their confidence frustrated. At this juncture, we hope that banks can tide over the difficulties with us. "
"From the perspective of the setting of financial institutions, at present, the service targets of financial institutions in China are mainly large enterprises, and there is a lack of policy banks specializing in serving small and medium-sized enterprises. The conservatism principle of commercial banks coexists with the high-risk characteristics of small and medium-sized enterprises, which will inevitably lead to some contradictions. " Tan Yaling, a financial expert from China Bank, explained to our reporter.
Relevant economic experts also said that because many small and medium-sized enterprises have low credit degree and many business variables, the credit risk is relatively high. Some enterprises regard loan funds as their own funds, and the phenomenon of short-term loans and long-term use is more prominent than that of large enterprises. Once banks give loans to these enterprises, it is difficult to repay the loan principal as promised; The non-performing loan ratio of small and medium-sized enterprises is significantly higher than that of large enterprises, which is also the key factor for small and medium-sized enterprises to encounter loan difficulties.
"However, there should be corresponding coping strategies in different periods. Small and medium-sized enterprises often have a keen sense of smell and quick turnover, and are an important force to enliven the economic atmosphere. If the problem of difficult loans for SMEs is not fundamentally solved, then this long-standing problem will be a bottleneck that has long plagued the development of the private economy. " Tang Min (Weibo column), who once worked in the Asian Development Bank, disagrees with this statement.
The government does not deny the "absence" of small and medium-sized enterprises in the national investment plan. When talking about the main problems existing in the development of small and medium-sized enterprises in Shaanxi Province, the Research Office of Shaanxi Provincial Government pointed out that "there are basically no small and medium-sized enterprises in the central 4 trillion investment plan, but the special funds for the development of small and medium-sized enterprises, the special funds for the industrialization of counties, the loan risk compensation fund for small and medium-sized enterprises and the financing guarantee interest discount for small and medium-sized enterprises have played a key role, but the number is still insufficient to meet the needs of enterprise development."
The introduction of a series of national policies, such as the increase of reserve ratio, the promulgation of labor contract law and the change of exchange rate, should have effectively promoted the development of the industry, but the facts are not satisfactory. At present, the government's macro-control of the economy can't actually help small and medium-sized enterprises solve practical problems. Because when the economy is overheated and the government implements a tight monetary policy, small and medium-sized enterprises or private enterprises are the first to bear the brunt, while when the economy is too cold and the speed is too low, the government implements a proactive fiscal policy, and the first to benefit is large enterprises, especially state-owned enterprises. Therefore, with the macro-control of the country, enterprises will be divided. According to this way of regulation and control, on the one hand, large enterprises and state-owned enterprises will become stronger and stronger, on the other hand, the pressure of small and medium-sized enterprises and private enterprises will become greater and greater, so the result of this macro-control is worrying and needs some reflection on macro-control.
More than 99% of enterprises in China are small and medium-sized enterprises. The healthy, sustained and rapid development of these enterprises is of great significance to the transformation mode, restructuring and benefiting people's livelihood. Therefore, to fundamentally improve the living conditions of small and medium-sized enterprises, it is necessary for the government, enterprises and the market to form a joint force to achieve this strategic goal. That is, the government sets up a stage, enterprises sing opera and the market guides. As far as government departments are concerned, it is necessary to constantly improve the service system of small and medium-sized enterprises, help them integrate and upgrade, and gradually improve the development environment of small and medium-sized enterprises.
Small and medium-sized enterprises in China can't afford to be hurt. What's more, it hurts again and again!