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New policies to stabilise real estate financing

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“This move is conducive to mitigating funding pressure in the housing sector, easing liquidity stress on some property developers, ensuring deliveries of pre-sold homes and stabilisin­g the housing market.”

Lou Feipeng

BEIJING: China’s latest policies will pump more liquidity into the economy to boost growth, improve real estate financing, stabilise market expectatio­ns and help shore up economic recovery in the coming months, industry experts say.

The China Securities Regulatory Commission announced on Monday it has decided to optimise real estate equity financing measures, such as resuming refinancin­g of listed real estate developers.

Other measures include the central bank’s move on Friday to cut the reserve requiremen­t ratio for financial institutio­ns by 0.25 percentage points, and 16 supportive measures released last week to ensure the steady developmen­t of the real estate sector. Their effects will gradually kick in and pave the way for a sound economic recovery, the experts said.

The reserve requiremen­t ratio (RRR) cut, which will take effect on Dec 5, is expected to inject about 500 billion yuan (Rm312.91bil) of liquidity into the economy, according to the People’s Bank of China (PBOC), the central bank.

The cut does not apply to financial institutio­ns that have already adopted an RRR of 5%.

Zhixin Investment Research Institute senior researcher Wang Yunjin said the cut was triggered by several factors including an expected increase in demand for liquidity at the end of the year and the need to maintain sufficient liquidity in the banking system to support the healthy developmen­t of the real estate industry.

PBOC governor Yi Gang said at the Annual Conference of Financial Street Forum 2022 last week that as the real estate sector is linked to many upstream and downstream industries, its virtuous circle is of great significan­ce to healthy economic developmen­t.

According to a circular jointly released by the PBOC and the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission (CBIRC), the country supports developmen­t and policy banks offering special loans aimed at ensuring delivery of pre-sold homes, and also encourages financial institutio­ns to provide ancillary financing for housing projects backed by the special loans.

The issuance of such special loans to real estate projects has almost been completed and effectivel­y promoted the delivery of projects, said a CBIRC official.

Large state-owned commercial banks are taking the lead in ramping up real estate financing. The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, the country’s largest commercial lender by assets, said on Thursday it would provide 655 billion yuan (Rm410bil) in credit lines to 12 developers.

“This move is conducive to mitigating funding pressure in the housing sector, easing liquidity stress on some property developers, ensuring deliveries of pre-sold homes and stabilisin­g the housing market.

“It will also have positive effects on real estate-related industries, thus better stabilisin­g economic growth and reducing systemic risk,” said Postal Savings Bank of China senior economist Lou Feipeng.

He added that there is still room for housing policies such as relaxing mortgage criteria for first-time home buyers, relaxing restrictio­ns on the number of homes purchased and guiding banks to cut mortgage rates. — China Daily/ann

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