BEIJING (Reuters) -China will expand a “white list” of housing projects eligible for financing and increase bank loans for such developments to 4 trillion yuan ($562 billion), Housing and Urban-Rural Development Minister Ni Hong said on Thursday.
Monetary measures will also be taken for urbanization projects, with one million villages included in such plans, Ni said at a news conference.
The pledges for more funding for cash-strapped developers and urban developments are part of a series of measures announced in recent weeks aimed at stabilizing a sector that entered crisis in 2021, hampering broader growth in the the world’s second largest economy was slowed down.
In January, China announced a plan for a “white list” of projects that can receive financing to ensure developers can complete construction and deliver homes to buyers. By the end of the third quarter, banks had approved 5,392 such projects, financing nearly 1.4 trillion yuan.
Approved loans for the “white list” projects had risen to 2.23 trillion yuan as of Oct. 16, Xiao Yuanqi, deputy director of the State Financial Regulatory Administration, said at the news conference.
On Saturday, Finance Ministry officials also announced measures to support the real estate sector, allowing local governments to use funds from special bonds to buy unsold houses and vacant land.
At the end of September, the central bank announced measures including a reduction in the minimum down payment ratio to 15% for all buyers.
($1 = 7.1161 Chinese Yuan Renminbi)
(Reporting by Joe Cash and Liangping Gao; Writing by Ryan Woo; Editing by Christian Schmollinger and Shri Navaratnam)
