China will set up a government venture capital fund worth 40 billion yuan ($6.5 billion) to support start-ups in emerging industries, in its latest move to support the private sector and foster innovation.
“The establishment of the state venture capital investment guidance fund, with the focus to support fledging start-ups in emerging industries, is a significant step for the combination of technology and the market, innovations and manufacturing,” China’s State Council, the cabinet, said in a statement.
“It will also help breed and foster sunrise industries for the future and promote (China’s) economy to evolve towards the medium and high ends,” it said in the statement published in the government’s website, www.gov.cn, referring to sectors which the government is promoting such as technology and green energy.
The government issued the statement after a meeting on Wednesday. It did not give a timetable, but past experience has shown that such a fund could be established within a few weeks after an announcement.
China’s venture capital market remains small, the legacy of the country’s decades of the planned economy in which private sector’s development is largely subject to a great variety of restrictions.
In the first half of 2014, 83 new funds were set up in China’s venture capital market, with fresh capital eligible for investment in the mainland surging 157 percent from a year earlier, but remaining at a moderate $6.76 billion, according to a research by Zero21PO Capital, a service provider and investment institution in China’s private equity industry.
During the period, 517 investment cases occurred in the market, with details of 440 made public on a combined investment capital of $5.3 billion, the research showed.