农村信用社市场化改革探索

自上个世纪90年代中期以来,中国的农村信用社经历了多次重大的改革。然而这些改革措施片面地注重农信社的产权及其内部治理结构等因素,却忽略了市场约束和竞争对塑造有活力的市场主体的必要性,因此难以很好地实现改革的预期目标。本文从农信社机构设立和业务经营的地理限制问题出发,提出了一个打破农信社业务经营的地理限制、促进农信社之间的竞争和兼并,从而强化市场约束的市场化改革设想,并对该设想的优势和潜在的问题以及可行性作了详细分析。

China's Rural Credit cooperatives (RCCs) have experienced a series of important reforms since early 1990s. However, the earlier reforms mainly focused on establishing a system of property rights, governance and business management for the RCCs and less on utilizing market competitions and disciplines as leverages in the reform. As a result, the outcomes of these reforms did not meet the expectation. This paper proposes a new approach to RCCs' reform by introducing market forces and market disciplines. Specifically, it is argued that the existing strict geographical restrictions placed on RCCs' business operations should be gradually relaxed and eventually removed at all, so that RCCs can compete among themselves. It is argued that market competition will eventually force RCCs to improve their own internal governance and management systems. Finally, the paper also considers there are some potential problems when the new reform approach is being introduced, and argues that these problems can be overcome.