China offers $325B in fiscal stimulus for ailing economy

‘SLOW’ GROWTH BUT STILL ENVIABLE An employee works at a factory, which produces car parts China’s Jiangsu province, as Beijing aims for a 5-percent growth this year. —AFP

BEIJING — China said Saturday it will make $325 billion in fiscal support available to its economy over the next three months, offering help to bolster banks, shore up the property market and free up consumption spending in Beijing’s biggest aid program since the global financial crisis.

The highly anticipated stimulus came on top of a series of measures announced over the last weeks that have included interest rate cuts and liquidity for banks. Despite the scale of the package, Finance Minister Lan Fo’an said China had the capacity to dig deeper.

“At present, we are accelerating the use of additional treasury bonds, and ultra-long-term special treasury bonds are also being issued for use,” he said. “In the next three months, a total of 2.3 trillion yuan of special bond funds can be arranged for use in various places,” he added.

Beijing plans to “issue special government bonds to support large state-owned commercial banks in replenishing core tier-one capital, enhance these banks’ risk resistance and credit lending capabilities, and better serve the development of the real economy”, Lan said.

The debt ceiling of local governments will also be lowered for them to spend more on infrastructure and to help protect jobs. The figure is slightly more than the two trillion yuan analysts and investors polled by Bloomberg had expected to be announced.

Mortgage help

Beijing has said it is aiming for five percent growth this year — enviable for many Western countries but a far cry from the double-digit expansion that for years drove the Chinese economy. But the economic uncertainty is also fueling a vicious cycle that has kept consumption stubbornly low.

Chinese policymakers have unveiled a string of stimulus measures including a suite of rate cuts and a loosening of rules on buying homes, but economists said that more action is needed to pull the economy out of its slump for good.

Earlier on Saturday, China’s top banks said they would cut lower interest rates on existing mortgages from Oct. 25, state media said, following a government call for the action.

“Except for second mortgages in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and some other regions, the interest rates on other eligible mortgages will be adjusted” to no less than 30 basis points below the prime lending rate, the central bank’s benchmark rate for mortgages, state broadcaster CCTV said.

CCTV reported that major banks including the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Agricultural Bank of China, Bank of China, and China Construction Bank had announced that they would make the adjustments “in batches.”

Rates cut

The banks said the tweaks “will be uniformly done… and customers do not need to apply for them”, CCTV reported.

The People’s Bank of China last month requested that commercial banks lower such rates by Oct. 31.

Beijing also last month slashed interest on one-year loans to financial institutions, cut the amount of cash lenders must keep on hand and pushed to lower rates on existing mortgages. And the central bank this week boosted support for markets by opening up tens of billions of dollars in liquidity for firms to buy stocks.

Beijing said the “swap facility” — worth 500 billion yuan — would encourage “the healthy and stable development of the capital market”.