China’s top banking regulators have highlighted ongoing efforts to safeguard Chinese home buyers in the wake of the recent debt crisis in the property development sector.
On 21 November the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) and the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission (CBIRC) jointly held the “National Commercial Bank Loan Work Conference” (全国性商业银行信贷工作座谈会), for the purpose of “researching and deploying implementation work for policy measures to use finance to stabilise the broader economy.”
The Conference called for “improving legal safeguards and regulatory policy support for new accompanying finance for special loans provided to ensure the delivery of properties; driving the accelerated implementation of work to guarantee the delivery of properties; upholding the lawful rights and interests of residential home consumers, and expediting the stable and healthy development of the real estate market.”
PBOC and CBIRC will work with commercial banks to “strive to effectively provide various financial services to stabilise investment, expedite consumption and protect people’s livelihoods; expand the intensity of loan support for key areas, weak linkages and industries and demographics adversely affected by the pandemic; and strive to drive the economy to further return to stability.”
Nationwide commercial banks will need to “strengthen their responsibilities, play the role of leaders and actively lean forward in exertion” in areas including:
- Making effective use of policy development financial tools.
- Expanding medium and long-term loan extension.
- Driving the accelerated formation of more substantive work volumes.
- Better employing the key role of effective investment.
- Effectively employing the combined force of special loans for capital equipment upgrades and improvements and fiscal discount policies.
- Actively supporting effective demand in the manufacturing and services sectors.
- Further expanding support for micro-and-small enterprises, individual industrial and commercial registrants and truck drivers.
- Deferring principal and interest repayments for financial inclusion loans to qualified micro-and-small enterprises.
- Actively cutting fees for and transferring profits to the real economy.
With regard to the real estate sector, PBOC and CBIRC called for “comprehensive implementation of long-term effective mechanisms for real estate; the effective implementation of differentiated housing loan policies, and support for inelastic and improvement housing demand.”
“They also called for “ensuring the healthy and stable development of real estate finance; stabilising the provision of building company loans and development loans to real estate enterprises; supporting rational demand for personal housing loans, and supporting rational deferrals of outstanding financing including development loans and trust loans, under the precondition of ensuring the security of creditors’ rights.”
