PBOC lays out measures to shore up housing sector

The People's Bank of China, the country's central bank, vowed on Aug. 1 to further tamp down interest rates and down payment ratios for new mortgages, while guiding banks to adjust the interest rates of existing mortgages, as part of the country's efforts to stabilize the housing market and strengthen countercyclical adjustments.

The PBOC will extend its loan support plan to ensure housing project delivery, the central bank said in a statement after the PBOC and the State Administration of Foreign Exchange held a meeting to arrange their work for the second half of the year.

Marking the PBOC's first work conference after Pan Gongsheng, head of SAFE, was appointed as central bank governor last week, the two bodies pledged to ramp up financial support for rental housing, the renovation of villages in cities and the construction of affordable housing projects. Stressing the need of optimizing foreign exchange policies, efforts were urged to keep a close eye on cross-border capital flows and strengthen macroprudential regulation and expectation management to keep the yuan exchange rate generally stable at a reasonable and balanced level.

As for monetary policy, it was decided at the meeting to continue to implement prudent monetary policy in a precise and forceful manner, consistently improve and stabilize market expectations and create a favorable monetary and financial environment for the steady growth of the real economy.

Multiple tools will be used to keep liquidity levels reasonably ample, promote a decline in corporate financing costs and household credit interest rates and bolster new economic growth drivers, the PBOC statement said.

The PBOC also vowed to deepen financial opening-up, taking measures including streamlining the procedures for overseas investors to invest in the Chinese market, facilitating overseas investors boosting holdings of renminbi-denominated assets, enriching the categories of assets available to them and promoting renminbi internationalization in an orderly manner. Efforts will also be made to improve the management framework for multinationals' integrated capital pool of domestic and foreign currencies, provide support for local government debt risk resolution and consistently advance digital yuan pilots.