Under the guidance of CSRC, SZSE revised theBusiness Guidelines on Publicly Offered Infrastructure Real Estate Investment Trusts No. 1 – Review Key Points (Trial) (Revised in 2023) (hereinafter referred to as the “Guidelines on REITs Review Key Points”) and released it on May 12. The revision is a concrete move for SZSE to implement relevant requirements specified in the Opinions on Making Better Use of Existing Assets and Expanding Effective Investment of the General Office of the State Council and theNotice on Further Advancing Relevant Work Concerning Regular Issuance of Infrastructure REITs of CSRC. It will further refine the basic policies and regulatory arrangements on infrastructure REITs and promote regular issuance of infrastructure REITs.

The Guidelines on REITs Review Key Points, with “managing assets” at its core, aims to build a system of rules on review and information disclosure consistent with the characteristics and laws of infrastructure REITs. 

First,SZSE has drawn on experiences in pilot projects, laid down product design specifications, detailed the requirements on institutions participating in the business, evaluation and cash flows, refined information disclosure requirements on transaction arrangements and fund operation management, and held participating market entities liable for their conduct to further improve the level of standardized operation of the market.Second,as the pilot projects are largely focused on industrial park assets and toll road assets with basically established features. SZSE has refined the review concerns of the two assets from aspects of project compliance, scope of assets and evaluation parameter setting. Meanwhile, SZSE has strengthened information disclosure requirements regarding previous operation statuses, rental or fee reduction or exemption, important cash flow providers, etc. and specified relevant matters such as accounting treatment of industrial park projects, arrangements for capacity expansion of toll road projects, etc.

Since the launch of the pilot project of infrastructure REITs in April 2020, SZSE has advanced relevant work including preparation of rules, market cultivation, building of the secondary market, etc. in a steady and orderly manner according to the overall plan of CSRC. Over the past three years, the supporting policies and regulations of infrastructure REITs in the SZSE market have been constantly improved and the asset types constantly enriched, which now cover mainstream infrastructure including industrial parks, toll roads, warehousing & logistics, municipal facilities, clean energy, government-subsidized rental housing, etc. SZSE has made breakthroughs in clean energy assets and government-subsidized rental housing assets before others. Meanwhile, SZSE has actively channeled more capital into national key areas and continued to strengthen the capability of the infrastructure REITs market to serve the real economy.

According to CSRC’s working requirement of “twelve measures to further promote regular issuance of REITs”, SZSE will ensure both standardization and development, formulate the periodical report and interim report disclosure guidelines on infrastructure REITs, strengthen market survey, deepen market cultivation, expand reserve of quality projects, and put forth effort to promote high-quality capacity expansion of the infrastructure REITs market, so as to better serve the high-quality development of the real economy.