- City to cover up to a fourth of borrowing costs as officials seek to ease financing burden on innovation-driven companies
- Fully digital application system aims to speed access to credit and channel funds toward advanced manufacturing clusters
Hangzhou will begin issuing loan-interest subsidy coupons to technology companies from April 1, offering up to 25% government support on bank borrowing costs in a bid to stimulate innovation and ease financing strains, according to an official announcement.
The program, jointly released on March 18 by the city’s science and technology and finance authorities, will allocate a total of 50 million yuan ($7.3 million) in fiscal funds.
Eligible companies — defined as science and technology enterprises certified by municipal-level or higher authorities — can apply on a first-come, first-served basis until the quota is exhausted.
Unlike traditional grants, the subsidies are structured as “consumption coupons” tied directly to loan activity.
Companies must first secure and draw down bank financing and make normal interest payments before receiving reimbursement covering as much as a quarter of the interest expense.
Officials say the design links fiscal support more closely to real financing demand while reducing upfront administrative barriers.
10 denominations
Coupons will be issued in 10 denominations ranging from 5,000 yuan to 200,000 yuan, allowing firms of different sizes to match subsidies with borrowing needs.
Applications will be handled entirely online through the city’s Hangchuang E-Station platform, an official sci-tech enterprise financing platform.
Firms gain an application opportunity at each completed step, including registration, authorization agreements and submission of financing requests. Each company may obtain up to three coupons through the program.
The initiative is part of a broader package of measures aimed at lowering financing costs for technology startups and supporting Hangzhou’s “296X” advanced manufacturing clusters strategy.
The “296X” is an industrial cluster blueprint the city introduced last October in an effort to speed up the integration of technological and industrial innovation.
The ‘296X’ strategy
“2” denotes artificial intelligence (AI) and visual intelligence, which Hangzhou will focus on cultivating into manufacturing clusters worth 2 trillion yuan (US$291 billion).
“9” refers to the established trillion-yuan industrial clusters the city will continue to support, ranging from integrated circuits to biomedicine.
“6” covers a group of high-potential emerging sectors, including aerospace, the low-altitude economy and brain-inspired intelligence. “X” represents future industries yet to be defined.
Hangzhou has a rich history of experimenting with quasi-financial policy tools to support innovation.
In 2015, Zhejiang, the province that governs Hangzhou, pioneered the use of innovation vouchers. These are government-issued digital credits that small and medium-sized firms could use to purchase research, testing and development services from universities and laboratories.
This model is designed to cut innovation costs while improving utilization of academic research resources.
