Two Chinese banks will issue loans totaling 436 billion yuan (about 62.25 billion U.S. dollars) within the next five years to support the renovation of old urban residential areas across the country.

China Development Bank, a major policy bank, has signed strategic cooperation agreements with Jilin, Zhejiang, Shandong, Hubei and Shaanxi to offer the provinces 261 billion yuan of loans.

China Construction Bank, one of the country's largest state-owned commercial banks, will offer loans worth 175 billion yuan to the cities of Chongqing, Shenyang, Nanjing, Hefei, Fuzhou, Zhengzhou, Changsha, Guangzhou and Suzhou.

Wang Menghui, minister of housing and urban-rural development, said at the agreement-signing ceremony that a large number of old urban residential communities require renovation as they generally have poor facilities and sanitation and lack public services and community management.

Wang added that the funding of the renovation projects should be shared by the government and the society at large.

The cooperation between the financial institutions and local governments aims at speeding up the establishment of a market-oriented and sustainable model for renovation projects and offering more replicable practices.

China has intensified the renovation of old urban residential areas this year, with 39,000 communities to be renovated and benefiting around 7 million households in 2020, according to a guideline issued by the State Council.

The guideline also emphasized that by 2022, the institutional framework, policy system and working mechanism for the renovation of old urban communities will be basically formed. By the end of 2025, the task of rebuilding old urban communities, which had been constructed before the end of 2000, should be basically completed.