An online travel agency is offering interest-free loans to staff who have to pay social maintenance fees because they break the family planning policy by having more than the permitted number of children.

Ctrip introduced the loans at the start of the year. The company's regulations say each loan should be no more than the central government's drafted social maintenance fees.

The loan should be no more than three times the level of the employee's after-tax income in the previous year, and should not exceed 200,000 yuan ($32,000).

If both parents work at Ctrip, they can apply as a family with a loan limit of 400,000 yuan. The repayment period should be no longer than 120 months.

A national management regulation was introduced at the end of last year to set a standard upper limit for social maintenance fees. Before then, local governments were able to set their own fees.

Based on the average disposable income per household in Shanghai, a family is fined 160,000 yuan if it does not meet the qualifications to have a second child.

"China relaxed its one-child policy, allowing couples to have a second baby if either parent is an only child," Liang Jianzhang, Ctrip's CEO, wrote in a column published on Monday.

"But a large number of Ctrip's employees are not the only child of their families, especially those who do not have the Shanghai household registration or those who were born in the 1970s. We are introducing this loan mainly to give a helping hand to these people.

Ctrip has more than 10,000 employees in Shanghai and 30,000 across the country. A number of employees have asked the company's human resources department for details of the loans, but so far no one has applied.

Liang said in a previous interview that "if no one applies for the loan, the situation is really serious, it means that people nowadays are not willing to have children anymore".

The loan offer is an attempt by the company to promote further reforms of the country's family planning policy.

According to figures released by the National Health and Family Planning Commission in January, only 1.07 million couples applied for permission to have a second child, which is less than 10 percent of the country's childbearing population.

Shanghai's Municipal Commission of Health and Family Planning said at the end of January that only 5 percent of the city's women of childbearing age submitted applications last year.

Beijing Municipal Commission of Health and Family Planning said around 30,000 couples in the capital submitted applications last year, though it had expected 50,000.

"The fact that only 10 percent of couples of childbearing age applied for permission would alarm any country," added Liang.

"Low fertility rates will cause a number of social and economic problems such as a decrease in the amount of labor and a weakening of the economy."

Social maintenance fees were introduced in the 1980s, and it is estimated that more than 20 billion yuan is collected annually.

Film director Zhang Yimou was fined 7.48 million yuan last year after admitting that he and his wife had three children before they were married.

shijing@chinadaily.com.cn