Problems in the pilot Project of "two Rights" Mortgage loan financing in Rural areas

Column

Luo Jianchao

At present, the issue of mortgage and guarantee of agricultural land management rights and farmers' housing property rights in various pilot counties and cities across the country has aroused widespread concern. In recent years, the experiment of "two rights" mortgage in rural areas has changed from pilot projects in local areas to the introduction of "guidance" and "interim measures" at the national level. It can be said that the breakthrough point and breakthrough have been found to solve the problems of "difficult loan, difficult mortgage and difficult guarantee" in rural areas. If this problem is well solved, the problem of "difficult and expensive loans" for farmers is expected to be fundamentally solved.

In order to follow up and study the current pilot effect of "two rights" mortgage pilot areas in rural areas across the country, we are supported by the Ministry of Education's "Yangtze River Scholars and Innovation team Development Plan" Innovation team Project "Research on Rural Financial Market allocation efficiency, supply and demand balance and property Mortgage financing Model in Western China". For four consecutive years, large-scale field surveys and peasant household questionnaires have been conducted in five cities (counties and districts), including Yangling and Gaoling in Shaanxi, Pingluo and Tongxin in Ningxia, and Shouguang in Shandong Province, and a large number of precious cases and data have been collected. through econometrics and empirical research, so far our research has mainly found the following:

The first discovery is that in terms of farmers' loan willingness and farmers' response to the pilot policy, through the test of the econometric model, it is found that small-scale farmers respond more positively to land management right mortgage loans than large farmers in the pilot areas. this is inconsistent with the current mainstream view. The policy implication of this discovery is that if the mortgage and guarantee of agricultural land management rights can benefit more low-income and small-scale farmers, then this policy in the formation of a replicable, easy to popularize, wide coverage of the rural financial system, can be further summed up experience, fully promoted.

The second discovery is that from the operation mode of agricultural land management right mortgage, we sum up two modes: the first model is the government-led type, that is, the "top-down" type, which is based on some normative documents issued by the government on the two-right mortgage. including operating procedures, procedures, risk control and other detailed rules and management methods, the host bank or rural credit cooperatives will run this business. At the same time, the transfer center of agricultural land management right at the government level should be set up to solve the problem of circulation and realization of collateral. At present, most of the modes of operation in the pilot areas are dominated by the government.

Another model is called market-oriented, that is, "bottom-up" type, represented by Tongxin County of Ningxia. The specific approach is to set up land mortgage cooperatives or mortgage associations at the village level, and farmers join cooperatives or associations with contracted land areas. if farmers have credit needs, they will use the target amount of their book management rights as collateral. The role of a land mortgage cooperative or association is to use the land owned by the village to provide counter-guarantee to farmers who borrow money from the credit union. From our field investigation in these five pilot areas, we have not found a non-performing default loan so far, which can be said to have achieved remarkable results.

We believe that the operation mode of the pilot area can be selected according to the local financial ecology and rural credit environment, especially the governance ability of the village committee at the village level.

The third discovery is that in the pilot areas, in order to control the risk of "two rights" mortgage in rural areas, the government has set up a guarantee fund to resolve some risks and losses in the mortgage process, but there are few guarantee funds in each place. How to change next, I suggest setting up a rural "two rights" mortgage credit guarantee company on the basis of the guarantee fund to solve the problem of credit risk and risk compensation in the process of mortgage guarantee.

The fourth discovery mainly involves a very important issue, that is, the value evaluation of agricultural land management rights and the development and construction of rural property rights transfer market. At present, the practice in the pilot areas is mainly determined by referring to the rents transferred between similar areas or farmers of the same kind of land, with a maximum of 1200 yuan and a minimum of 600 yuan, plus the remaining contract years, etc. respectively according to the weight of 0.5 to calculate the value of agricultural land management rights. This method of determining the value is actually a method of evaluating the usufruct of the right to the management of agricultural land, and the value of the general evaluation is relatively low, although financial institutions welcome it. However, the policy goal of solving the "dilemma" of farmers' loans needs to be improved. We believe that there is an urgent need to determine the value evaluation system of agricultural land management rights, and it is suggested that the relevant departments should determine the government-guided price according to the regional layout of agriculture, the location of land, fertility and so on, which will be higher than the rent evaluation. At the same time, we can also explore the gradual introduction of "third-party" evaluation institutions in rural areas to solve the problem of credibility of "two rights" value evaluation.

Another thing worth paying attention to is the development and construction of the property rights transfer market of agricultural land management rights. At present, the risk of the pilot project of "two-right" mortgage is still relatively small, but due to the influence of agricultural nature, market, policy risk and other factors, the risk of "two-right" mortgage will be gradually exposed with the introduction of the pilot. Banks want rural property mortgage loans to be in breach of contract or unable to repay principal and interest, and property rights collateral must be taken over, which requires a market system in which property rights can be realized through the rural property rights transfer market. The problem of the realization of property rights worried by financial institutions can only be solved.

Finally, the guiding ideology and principles of "two rights" mortgage in rural areas have been clearly stated in the pilot "guiding opinions" and "interim measures", in which special attention should be paid to the construction of rural credit system and rural financial infrastructure, which is not only a major problem of rural finance, but also a systematic project. Only when the rural credit system is well built and the credit environment is good, can we really solve the problem of "difficult and expensive loans" for farmers, so as to achieve the expected purpose of the pilot policy, and can the pilot project be launched smoothly.

(the writer is the director of the Institute of Rural Finance, Northwest University of Agriculture and Forestry Science and Technology)