Recently, the Postal Savings Bank of China (hereinafter referred to as PSBC) signed the UN Sustainable Blue Economy Finance Initiative (hereinafter referred to as the Initiative), and became the first large state-owned commercial bank in China to sign the Initiative. The Initiative aims to enable financial institutions to rebuild ocean prosperity, regenerate ocean health and restore biodiversity. It provides assistance and guidance for banks, insurance companies and investors to adopt and implement the Sustainable Blue Economy Finance Principles, and a guidance framework for financing sustainable ocean economy. The Initiative is managed by the United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative. By the end of this February, more than 70 institutions and members had signed the Initiative.

“We will develop the marine economy, protect the marine ecological environment, and step up efforts to build China into a strong maritime country,” the report to the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China said. In recent years, PSBC has been comprehensively advancing the development of green banking and actively supporting the blue economy. On one hand, PSBC continues to optimize its credit granting policies. It has formulated credit granting guidelines concerning water, marine industry, port, shipping industry, shipbuilding industry and other industries related to the blue economy, optimized the allocation of blue financial resources, and enabled more funds to be invested in sustainable blue industry, thereby comprehensively enhancing the capabilities to serve the marine economy. On the other hand, PSBC has innovated blue financial products and services and extended sea financial services. It has actively supported the upgrading and transformation of aquaculture infrastructure, tailored financial service schemes to help aquaculturists solve their financing problems at the early stage. It has developed individualized exclusive financial products to alleviate difficulties of large credit loans for fishermen and aquaculturists. It has also explored the government-bank-enterprise cooperation modes to meet customers’ demands for diverse financial services while revitalizing ocean resources.