In 2015, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) issued the Circular on Promoting the Reform of the Filing and Registration Regime for Issuance of Foreign Debt by Enterprises, under which, both issuance of bonds and borrowing of mid-and-long term commercial loans overseas by PRC enterprises and/or their offshore subsidiaries and branches (collectively, the debtors) are subject to a prior filing and registration with NDRC (foreign debt filing). Over the past five years, the debtors as applicants encountered a lot of issues with regard to the foreign debt filing due to the ambiguity in definitions, scope and standards thereof. As a result, the NDRC issued detailed application guidance including 25 FAQs and respective answers in February 2020, aiming to make these issues clear.
Since the 1990s, all the financial institutions in China's loan market have determined their interest rate by floating up or down certain proportions of the benchmark interest rate announced by the People's Bank of China (PBOC Base Rate). Because the PBOC Base Rate is not closely aligned to the immediate supply-demand dynamics and also because it lacks a transparent pricing calculation formula, the PBOC Base Rate is generally considered as an administrative guidance price rather than a market-oriented price.
