(Beijing) – A creditors' committee led by State Development Bank (SDB) agreed to extend 2 billion yuan worth of new loans to Yingli Green Energy Holding Co. as part of a plan to restructure the debt-stricken solar module maker, a person close to the deal says.

The New York-listed company will receive the money before Spring Festival, the holiday also called Chinese New Year that this year runs from February 7 to 13, the source said.

Creditors made the decision because they believe Yingli, once the world's top solar panel maker, can pull off a turnaround, he said.

Yingli, whose headquarters are in Baoding, in the northern province of Hebei, has been suffering losses since 2011 due to a failure to cut costs amid falling prices. The company said that its losses more than tripled year-on-year to over 500 million yuan in the first three quarters of last year.

Supported by government subsidies, several solar panel manufacturers in China made a splash on global markets over the last decade, before plunging into debts as a result of overcapacity.

Wuxi Suntech Power Co. Ltd., based in the in the eastern province of Jiangsu, became the world's No. 1 solar module maker by market share in 2010. However, since 2013 it has only stayed afloat because the local government came to its rescue with bailouts.

Yingli, the solar module manufacturer by market share in the world in 2012 and 2013, had run up 10.4 billion yuan in debts at the end of 2014, company records show. Its debt-to-asset ratio, a broad measure of a company's level of leverage, has exceeded 100 percent.

Its creditors include the Hebei branch of SDB and several other banks, including the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Bank of China and Export-Import Bank of China.

The company this week confirmed a plan by China Banking Regulatory Commission and National Energy Administration to support its debt reorganization via a creditors' committee. The plan was laid out in a copy of minutes taken at a meeting that started circulating online on January 31. Yingli said it hoped to cut its debt level via a debt-share swap program with creditors.

The person close to the loan deal said the company is also working with state-owned China Cinda Asset Management Co. to unload some of its non-performing assets.

One Yingli executive who asked not to be named said that the new loans will ease the financial pressure the company is under for the time being, while Cinda's involvement in its debt restructuring can boost its management in the long run.

(Rewritten by Li Rongde)