Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Hebei province lack billions of yuan that could be provided by guarantee companies, the Hebei Business Daily reported, citing the chairman of such a company.

This includes 120 billion yuan that is needed as working capital by the province's SMEs, said Li Lingcheng, chairman of the Hebei State-owned Holding Guarantee Group Co Ltd, which has a registered capital of 1.15 billion yuan.

At the end of October, 2009, there were 311 guarantee institutions in Hebei, with a total registered capital of 10.44 billion yuan.

But a survey of 125 guarantee institutions shows that 36.8 percent of them have not provided guarantee service, which means approximately 3.5 billion yuan of guarantee funds have not been used, Li said at a conference of guarantee companies from Hebei, Henan, Anhui, Heilongjiang and Guangdong provinces, Chongqing Municipality and the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region.

The difficulties SMEs face in fund raising is not a simple economic problem any more, but has influenced all aspects of the society, said Zhou Jie, director of the State-owned Assets Supervision & Administration Commission of the Hebei Province. State-owned companies should try to help solve this problem, he said.

SMEs play a big role in job generation in China.

By Song Jingli