The financial departments at the Harbin municipal level and Heilongjiang provincial level recently allocated another 320 million yuan ($45.61 million) to support companies that are resuming their operations and production, according to officials in the capital city of China’s northernmost Heilongjiang province.

They said that due to the outbreak of the novel coronavirus worldwide, some businesses in Harbin encountered short-term difficulties such as the suspension of operations, a sharp decline in orders, labor shortages and pressures on cash flow.

In response to the current situation of slowing down payments, tight capital liquidity and difficulties in repaying loans, the Harbin Guarantee Center launched a series of working capacity preferential policies to support local enterprises.

Under the policies, the range of industries supported by the working capital will expand from industrial enterprises to full-caliber industries, including agriculture, retail and wholesale and transportation.

An enterprise can carry out staged borrowing involving multiple capital turnover, according to the orders or production cycle.

According to the needs of enterprises, the minimum requirement of working capital of 3 million yuan will be abolished, and the strict upper limit of 10 million yuan will be relaxed.

Meanwhile, the handling fees of working capital will be halved; and the use period of each working capital will be increased from 30 days to 60 days.

To date, Harbin Guarantee Center has approved working capital at 9.3 billion yuan for 1,379 enterprises.