The Impact Of Green Credit Policy On Debt Financing Of Heavy Polluting Enterprises

Since China implemented reform and opening up for more than 30 years,its tremendous economic achievements have attracted worldwide attention,and its industrialization process has also accelerated.At the same time,China’s environmental pollution problems have become increasingly prominent.How to find a balance between socio-economic development and environmental protection is one of the basic problems that need to be solved urgently in the process of sustainable development of our society and economy in the current era.In his report on the work of the government to the 19 th National Congress of the Communist Party of China,general secretary Xi jinping made it clear that to achieve harmonious development and coexistence between man and nature,We must firmly establish and implement the developmemt philosophy of “clear waters and green mountains are mountains of gold and silver” and adhere to the basic state policy of conserving resources and protecting the environment.As the main manufacturers of environmental pollution problems,especially those in heaviy polluting industries,environmental protection and pollution control issues have aroused widespread concern from all walks of life.The party and government have successively formulated and issued a series of policies and regulations and tried use financial means to further promote ecological environmental protection.In the current environment under the background of the severe pollution and governance difficulties,green credit policy releasing,the July 2007 issued "on the implementation of environmental policies and regulations to prevent credit risk of opinions",the policy documents issued and came marks China’s environmental governance tools more green credit this financial tool.In February 2012,the China Banking Regulatory Commission formally released the "Green Credit Guidelines",which made relatively specific arrangements for financial institutions’ green credit work,and proposed that banks and other financial institutions pay attention to corporate social responsibility and environmental performance during credit reviews.Requirements,provide more adequate credit resources and more favourable interest rates for the green industries supported by the state,reduce the amount of loans and increase their borrowing rates for heavily polluting industries that are not encouraged or strictly restricted by the state,and guide the capital by the "projects" industry shift to green industry,will help accelerate the transformation of economic development methods and realize the optimization,transformation and upgrading of industrial structure.Therefore,theimplementation of green credit policy will theoretically affect the allocation of bank credit resources.However,financial institutions such as banks,as the main bodies of green credit policy implementation,will consider the profitability perspective during the implementation of the policy,and may deviate from the national policy objectives to implement the policy incompletely.Since the implementation of the "Green Credit Guidelines",has it really exerted its policy effects,and has it affected the debt financing of heavily polluting enterprises to a certain extent? For enterprises with different property rights,does the effect differ? This article focuses on these two aspects,and tries to study the net policy effect of green credit on debt financing behavior from the micro level of the enterprise.It expands the related research on the economic consequences of green credit policy and the impact factors of debt financing,and provides new research ideas and methods for the test of green credit policy.In view of this,this article is based on the four theories of stakeholder theory,sustainable development theory,information asymmetry theory and environmental risk management theory,and refers to previous research results on green credit and corporate debt financing.Based on this,the relationship between green credit policy and corporate debt financing is explored.Taking 2009-2018 A-share heavily polluting listed companies as the research object,non-heavy polluting companies were used as their counterfactual control samples,and an empirical analysis was conducted using the different-in-different model to explore the net impact of green credit policy on corporate debt financing(debt financing Scale,long-term debt financing,short-term debt financing,debt cost).Furthermore,the effects of green credit policy on debt financing of state-owned enterprises and non-state-owned enterprises under different property rights are further investigated.he empirical analysis shows that:(1)in terms of debt financing level: since the implementation of the green credit policy,compared with non-heavily polluting enterprises,the scale of debt financing of the heavily polluting enterprises has been significantly reduced.After further subdividing debt financing into long-term debt financing and short-term debt financing,it was found that compared with non-heavy polluting companies,green credit policies significantly reduced long-term debt financing of heavy polluting companies,and the reduction of short-term debt financing was Significantly.(2)In terms of debt financing costs,compared with non-heavily polluting enterprises,green credit policies have significantly increased the debt financing costs of heavily polluting enterprises.(3)Under the differences in the nature of property rights,whether in terms of debt financing level or debt financing cost,compared with non-state-owned enterprises,the impact of green credit policies on state-owned enterprises is more obvious.From the above empirical conclusions,the implementation of green credit policy does have a certain financing constraint effect on the micro-subject of heavily polluting enterprises,but this constraint effect has certain limitation,namely the enterprise short-term debt financing credit constraints is not obvious and the effect of financing constraints exist in the state-owned enterprises and non-state-owned enterprises asymmetry.Finally,this article puts forward policy recommendations based on relevant conclusions and the limitations of China’s green credit development.