Recently, ZPEC received the first overseas business loan to be granted in the Lingang New Area of Shanghai’s Pilot Free Trade Zone. It is also the first overseas loan made under the New Policy of Foreign Exchange Management Reform Trial in the Pilot Free Trade Zone. This marked the high-level policy implementation for cross-border trade and investment in the Lingang New Area and will strongly support the company's overseas business development, saving more than 450K USD (3M RMB) cost per year.

Since the beginning of 2022, ZPEC's overseas business contracts have increased greatly with many new projects, which has increased the capital demand for overseas projects and other businesses. At the same time, the domestic oil and gas exploration and production income has increased with a relatively abundant domestic cash flow.  Using domestic idle funds to support the development of overseas' projects has become a regular occurrence and, for this reason, ZPEC conducted in-depth discussions with its cooperation banks on this issue.

Not long ago, the Lingang New Area released the detailed implementation rules for the Pilot Reform of High-level Opening-up Foreign Exchange Management for Cross-border Trade and Investment. The scale of overseas lending by non-financial enterprises in the New Area has increased from 0.5 times to 0.8 times of the original owner's equity. This provides a good opportunity for both banks and enterprises to reach overseas lending business cooperation. ZPEC’s good market performance and integrated layout at home and abroad have been approved and recognized by the Foreign Exchange Bureaus and Financial Institutions. Under the guidance of the Shanghai Branch of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange and the specific implementation of the Shanghai Branch of the Agricultural Bank of China, the first overseas loan business in the new area was finally granted to ZPEC, achieving the breakthrough of zero overseas loan business under the new foreign exchange management policy in the Lingang New Area.

(ZPEC Headquarters/ Zhang Zhongwei)