Guangfa Bank Disburses Over 480 Billion Yuan in Loans for Guangdong's County Development Program

By Investment Time Network & Benchmark Financial Reporter Zhang Jingyu

Promoting coordinated development between urban and rural areas is an essential requirement for Guangdong's advancement of Chinese-style modernization. In December 2022, the Second Plenary Session of the 13th Guangdong Provincial Party Committee approved a decision to implement the "High-Quality Development Project for Hundreds of Counties, Thousands of Towns, and Tens of Thousands of Villages" (the "Hundreds, Thousands, and Tens of Thousands" Project). The provincial party committee further clarified that this project would be the top priority for promoting coordinated urban-rural development, covering all 122 counties (cities, districts), 1,609 towns (subdistricts), and 26,500 administrative villages (communities) across the province. The year 2026 marks a critical juncture as the project transitions from "initial results in three years" to "significant changes in five years." Advancing this top-priority project for high-quality development requires precise and robust financial support.

Guangfa Bank is the only national joint-stock commercial bank headquartered in Guangzhou, with full coverage of institutions and business across all "9+2" cities in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. Anchored by its strategic positioning as a "main force bank serving the Greater Bay Area," the bank leverages its unique advantages of "being backed by China Life and rooted in the Bay Area." It has made serving the "Hundreds, Thousands, and Tens of Thousands" Project a key focus for deepening its presence in the Bay Area and county-level markets. The bank formulated a special action plan, outlining 15 key tasks across six major categories: increasing resource investment in agriculture, rural areas, and farmers; supporting county and town industrial development and transformation; promoting urban and rural consumption upgrades; supporting urban and rural infrastructure construction; consolidating poverty alleviation achievements; and strengthening financial service channels. It has built an inclusive financial product matrix of "head office standardized products + branch-specific projects," tailoring agricultural loan products to local conditions and precisely matching the differentiated financing needs of county-level industries. As of now, Guangfa Bank has cumulatively disbursed over 480 billion yuan in loans for the "Hundreds, Thousands, and Tens of Thousands" Project.

From a Mooncake to the Financing Rhythm of County Industries

In the golden autumn season, China's Farmers' Harvest Festival coincides with the Mid-Autumn Festival. In Maoming, western Guangdong, mooncake production is entering its busiest time of the year. Aligning with the "one county, one industry; one town, one specialty" industrial layout, Guangfa Bank has built a specialized product shelf targeting characteristic industrial clusters in western Guangdong, including mooncakes, lychees, longans, and Citri Grandis Exocarpium (Huajuhong). Through mechanisms such as special credit plans, green approval channels, and special assessment incentives, the bank ensures that financial resources are precisely injected into all links of the industrial chain.

Maoming, known as the "Kind-hearted City" on the coast of the South China Sea, boasts over 1,300 years of mooncake-making history and has been awarded the title "China Mooncake Famous City." Its mooncake industry scale has ranked among the top prefecture-level cities nationwide for consecutive years. The city is home to over 250 mooncake production enterprises, employing approximately 150,000 people, with an annual output value exceeding 5 billion yuan. Leveraging its "Five Trees, One Fish, One Table of Dishes" characteristic agricultural cluster, local producers process agricultural products like lychees, longans, and Huajuhong into fillings, connecting the industrial chain from field to factory and transforming "small mooncakes" into a "big industry" that enriches the people and revitalizes villages.

The peak season places significant pressure on the cash flow of mooncake enterprises. Traditional one-year working capital loans may not fully cover the operating cycle from stocking and production to sales collection. Guangfa Bank Maoming Branch proactively adjusted its services, extending the term of single working capital loans to no more than three years. One beneficiary is a "Guangdong Time-honored Brand" that started as a neighborhood bakery and now sells products nationwide and overseas. At the critical moment of centralized raw material procurement, a 6-million-yuan working capital loan facility was successfully disbursed on schedule.

By extending loan terms, the financing rhythm better aligns with the "small mooncake" production cycle. Last year, Guangfa Bank Maoming Branch proactively engaged with enterprises, approving a 10-million-yuan credit facility for a provincial-level intangible cultural heritage mooncake-making leading enterprise to modernize its workshop. It also approved a 6-million-yuan credit facility for another mooncake enterprise, which holds both "Guangdong Time-honored Brand" and provincial intangible cultural heritage status, focusing on inheriting intangible cultural heritage techniques and brand upgrading, allowing the time-honored brand to operate with less financial burden. The "financial filling" planted last year has now materialized into golden, crispy mooncakes on the Mid-Autumn market, spreading Maoming's sweet fragrance from western Guangdong to broader horizons.

The financing needs of characteristic industries do not always follow the standardized pattern of borrowing for one year and repaying in one year. For industries with distinct production cycles and sales seasons, financial services must also follow the industry's timeline. This applies to mooncakes, lychees, and Huajuhong. Guangfa Bank has customized exclusive products such as "Lychee Loan," "Pineapple Loan," and "Aquilaria Sinensis Loan" for "Guangdong-brand" agricultural products like lychees and longans in western Guangdong, Xuwen pineapples, and Maoming agarwood, ensuring that the pace of financial services follows the industry's seasons. A mooncake, a lychee, a piece of agarwood—these represent the most vibrant consumption pulse of the Bay Area's county economies and the most concrete industrial expression of the "Hundreds, Thousands, and Tens of Thousands" Project on the land of Lingnan.

From the Sea to Monetizing the Credit of Characteristic Industries

Guangdong is a major maritime province, with the longest mainland coastline in the country. Building a modern marine ranch is a key path for Guangdong to practice the "big food concept" and promote high-quality development of the marine economy. The "Guangdong Province Modern Marine Ranch Development Master Plan (2024–2035)" proposes to fully establish the "Yuehai Granary" by 2035, building a strong marine fishery province with international influence. For asset-light industries like marine ranches, Guangfa Bank collaborates with policy-oriented guarantee institutions such as Guangdong Agricultural Financing Guarantee Co., Ltd. to build a risk-sharing mechanism that coordinates policy guarantees, agricultural insurance, and special loans, turning the concept that "no collateral does not mean no credit" into reality for county industries.

Raoping County in Chaozhou City is a major maritime county in Guangdong and a key county for Guangfa Bank's vertical assistance under the "Hundreds, Thousands, and Tens of Thousands" Project. Marine ranch construction is a crucial lever for leveraging local marine resources and promoting rural revitalization.

For aquaculture farmers and enterprises, the operational risks of mariculture are difficult to quantify. Natural environmental risks are unpredictable, and business entities are often asset-light, lacking fixed assets for collateral, making traditional credit methods difficult to apply. Additionally, the pronounced seasonality of industrial cycles and funding needs complicates the establishment of standardized credit assessments. A leading local aquaculture enterprise was stuck precisely due to being "asset-light and lacking collateral." Guangfa Bank Shantou Branch broke away from traditional logic by incorporating rights certificates such as sea area use rights, aquaculture permits, and insurance policies, along with industrial operational data, into the credit assessment system. This made previously unquantifiable "implicit credit" explicit, tailoring a 10-million-yuan special credit loan for the enterprise.

Simultaneously, Guangfa Bank Shantou Branch partnered with Guangdong Agricultural Financing Guarantee Co., Ltd. to provide policy guarantees at preferential rates, combined with special loan preferential interest rates and embedded policy-based marine cage aquaculture insurance. This created a full-chain service system of "guarantee fee reduction + interest rate concession + risk mitigation." To date, Guangfa Bank Shantou Branch has provided 29 million yuan in special loan support for the Raoping marine ranch aquaculture industry, covering the entire cycle from seedling procurement, feed storage, and environmentally friendly cage upgrades to infrastructure construction, promoting the application of "wood-to-plastic" eco-friendly cages and deep-sea gravity cages.

This exemplifies the practical application of Guangfa Bank's unique advantage of "being backed by China Life" at the county level. Leveraging the comprehensive financial strengths of the China Life Group, Guangfa Bank collaborates with China Life's insurance segment to provide integrated "insurance + credit" products, using policy-based agricultural insurance for credit enhancement. Insurance first covers natural risks, and then the bank provides funding support. This bank-insurance linkage provides robust support for county-level industrial financial services.

While aquaculture faces the challenge of insufficient collateral and financing difficulties, agricultural processing enterprises bear a different kind of pressure. A seafood enterprise in Zhelin Town, Raoping County, processes green shrimp using high-quality sea areas in Zhelin Bay and Dacheng Bay. Its products are listed as a Guangdong "Yue-brand" agricultural product, covering hot pot catering, prepared foods, and supermarket fast-moving consumer goods channels. The maturity period for whiteleg shrimp in eastern and western Guangdong is concentrated from May to July and September to November. Once the season arrives, enterprises must quickly purchase shrimp in bulk and store them at low temperatures to fulfill annual orders. However, the enterprise operates on an asset-light basis without large fixed assets for collateral, and its funding gap is "short, fast, and urgent," making traditional credit difficult to match with the actual rhythm.

Guangfa Bank Shantou Branch conducted a multi-dimensional comprehensive assessment based on the enterprise's actual cash flow, operational data, and credit history, ultimately approving a 5-million-yuan credit line with preferential interest rates, precisely supporting the enterprise's peak-season needs for centralized shrimp procurement and fresh-keeping inventory preparation.

This "credit monetization" approach extends beyond the sea. In Huizhou, the Luofu Mountain Butterfly Valley Farm is transforming into an "eco + leisure" cultural tourism complex, also constrained by being asset-light and lacking collateral. Guangfa Bank Huizhou Branch partnered with Guangdong Agricultural Financing Guarantee Co., Ltd. to customize the "Leisure Agriculture Guarantee Loan," combined with Boluo County's policy of full guarantee fee exemption, opening a financing channel for the project's transformation. Guangdong is currently accelerating the construction of the leading area for high-quality development of counties, towns, and villages around the South Kunlun Mountain–Luofu Mountain corridor. Whether these cultural tourism complexes can successfully transform tests the adaptability of finance to new county-level industrial forms. In Meizhou, an electrical manufacturing enterprise faced a funding gap for heavy asset investments like new factory construction and equipment procurement. Guangfa Bank Meizhou Branch conducted a detailed investigation of its operations and provided 150 million yuan in comprehensive credit support through a combination of "working capital loans + domestic letters of credit + forfaiting."

From marine ranches to cultural tourism farms, from county-level processing to manufacturing upgrades, the concept that "asset-light entities can also obtain credit support" is becoming a common practice for Guangfa Bank in serving county industries in the Bay Area. As the dimensions of financial assessment expand from single fixed assets to operational data, industrial prospects, and insurance credit enhancement, enterprises in counties, towns, and villages gain more opportunities to be recognized.

From a Chain to the Depth of Financial Services

Why can Guangfa Bank continuously serve these county-level characteristic industries? A key reason is that its financial services do not stop at providing a loan to an enterprise but continuously move closer to the specific operational links of the industry.

Products follow the industry. Guangfa Bank's exclusive product shelf for characteristic agriculture under the "Hundreds, Thousands, and Tens of Thousands" Project precisely matches the funding needs across the entire cycle of planting expansion, cold chain storage, processing chain extension, and brand operation. In the marine economy sector, Guangfa Bank has also introduced the "Marine Carbon Sink Loan," using the future trading rights to carbon emission reductions generated by algae and shellfish aquaculture as collateral. The scale of modern marine ranch loans continues to grow, covering cities such as Zhuhai, Jiangmen, Zhanjiang, Yangjiang, Shanwei, and Chaozhou.

Services extend down to counties, towns, and villages. Guangfa Bank has established 30 county-level branch outlets in eastern and western Guangdong, dispatched a total of 50 financial assistants and financial village officials, and expanded its services to more towns and villages through inclusive finance characteristic sub-branches, "agriculture, rural areas, and farmers" financial mobile service teams, and agricultural service stations. For county-level enterprises, financing difficulties sometimes stem not just from a lack of funds but also from the bank's "insufficient understanding." By accessing provincial big data tools like Yuexinfen, combined with data laboratories and risk models, Guangfa Bank enriches the credit information of county-level enterprises, assisting in risk identification and credit decision-making. At the same time, through mechanisms such as special credit plans and green approval channels, it provides differentiated financial support for county industries.

From "financing" to "intelligence empowerment." In 2022, Guangfa Bank became the designated service bank for Guangdong Province's special rural revitalization bonds. It assisted the Provincial Department of Agriculture and Rural Affairs in drafting and launching the country's first rural revitalization special bond reserve plan, signed issuance advisory cooperation agreements with 15 cities, conducted over 40 training sessions and project meetings, and provided on-site research and consulting for over a thousand projects. The radius of financial services extends beyond enterprise projects. Guangfa Bank Zhanjiang Branch provides targeted assistance to Beipo Village, Baisha Town, Leizhou City, donating special funds for rural greening improvements. To date, approximately 400 seedlings have been planted, and 2,400 meters of new green roads have been added, contributing to the ecological construction of a green and beautiful Guangdong through concrete actions in town and village support. In the counties, towns, and villages of the Bay Area, the tentacles of financial services are extending deeper, inch by inch, along industrial chains, road networks, and tidal patterns.

The "Hundreds, Thousands, and Tens of Thousands" Project is driving new changes in the pattern of urban and rural development in Guangdong. As the project continues to advance in depth, how finance can better play its role in resource allocation and inject sustained momentum into county economies will become a crucial lens for observing Guangdong's high-quality development. Guangfa Bank will continue to explore more possibilities for serving county industries, channeling financial resources into the counties, towns, villages, and land-sea industrial belts of the Bay Area, continuously empowering the high-quality development of Guangdong's urban and rural areas, and contributing to Guangdong's efforts to take the lead in Chinese-style modernization.

Investment Time Keywords: Guangfa Bank