2021 is the third year of private enterprise relief and the year of China's economic and policy transition to normalization after the epidemic. Many new changes have taken place in the operating environment and operating conditions of private enterprises. This report focuses on combing the status of private enterprises in financing, operation and development in 2021, and analyzes the pain points and difficulties faced by private enterprises.
Ping An View:
\u3000\u30001. The credit financing environment of private enterprises has improved significantly, but it is more difficult to finance in the bond market. In particular, weak qualified private enterprises are withdrawing from the bond market, and the structural support of monetary policy needs to be adhered to. In 2021, the credit scale of small and micro enterprises and private enterprises continued to grow and the financing cost further decreased, and the loan demand was fully met. However, the net financing amount of credit bonds of private enterprises further decreased to - 274.5 billion yuan, and the net financing amount of credit bonds of state-owned enterprises reached 6.71 trillion yuan in the same period. In particular, rural commercial banks are obviously lagging behind in supporting the incremental performance of small and micro enterprises, and the policies and measures to support the capital supplement of small and medium-sized banks need to be accelerated. By the end of the third quarter of 2021, the balance of inclusive small and micro enterprise loans of agricultural commercial banks accounted for 32.3% of the total, but the proportion of new inclusive small and micro enterprise loans was only 25.8%, which did not match the proportion of the balance.
\u3000\u30002. Under the high export boom, the production of private enterprises expanded rapidly, but the high price of raw materials in the upstream kept the production cost of private enterprises high, resulting in the tendency of "increasing income without increasing profit", and the profit performance of the middle reaches was significantly better than that of the downstream. Private enterprises are mainly concentrated in the middle and lower reaches of industry, especially in the downstream industries. According to the total asset scale in 2020, the average proportion of private industrial enterprises in the upstream industry is only 16.2%, while the average proportion in the midstream and downstream industries reaches 35.6% and 40.8% respectively. The two-year average growth rate of total profits of private and joint-stock industrial enterprises in 2021 was 14.7% and 20.4% respectively, 8.4 and 2.7 percentage points lower than that of state-owned enterprises. From the fourth quarter of 2021, the number of loss making enterprises in private industrial enterprises also took the lead in returning to positive growth.
\u3000\u30003. In the gradual contraction of total demand since the second half of 2021, the weakening of expectations of private enterprises is more obvious, and the decline of total demand has increasingly become the main source of pressure for private enterprises. According to the entrepreneur confidence index released by the National Bureau of statistics, in the third quarter of 2021, the entrepreneur confidence index of private enterprises decreased by 7.1 percentage points to 118.3 compared with the first quarter, while that of state-owned enterprises decreased by only 3.7 to 128.0. The characteristics of "passive plus leverage" of private enterprises have been strengthened. The accelerated expansion of total assets of private enterprises in 2021 is mainly due to the pull of non current assets, inventory and finished product funds, that is, it only partially reflects the growth of fixed asset investment, which is largely due to the passive backlog of inventory. So as to form a chain of "passive overstock of inventory - passive accelerated growth of current assets - passive financing turnover of enterprises".
\u3000\u30004. Investment in manufacturing industry has led to the recovery of private investment, but the problem of low return on investment of private enterprises is highlighted again. Private fixed asset investment is mainly concentrated in manufacturing and real estate. In 2021, the manufacturing industry was "outshining others" in China's fixed asset investment, and its pull on private investment reached 1.8 percentage points. We use the data of A-share listed companies to calculate the ROIC of state-owned enterprises and private enterprises. It can be seen that the return on investment of state-owned enterprises again surpassed that of private enterprises in the third quarter of 2021. At present, the recovery of private investment is highly dependent on the high export boom. At the same time, it is hit by the high price of raw materials in the upstream and the weakening of total demand. The foundation of investment growth of private enterprises needs to be strengthened.
