China boosts funds for housing projects to support embattled sector

BEIJING (Reuters) -China will expand a “white list” of housing projects eligible for financing and increase bank lending for such developments to 4 trillion yuan ($562 billion), Minister of Housing and Urban-Rural Development Ni Hong said on Thursday.

Monetisation measures will also be undertaken for urbanisation projects, with a million villages to be included in such plans, Ni said at a press conference.

The pledges for more financing for cash-strapped developers and urban developments are part of a series of measures announced in recent weeks aimed at stabilising a sector that plunged into crisis in 2021, dragging on broader growth in the world’s second-largest economy.

In January, China announced a plan for a “white list” of projects that can receive financing to ensure that developers could complete construction and deliver homes to buyers. As of the end of the third quarter, banks had approved 5,392 such projects, with financing reaching 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 press conference.

On Saturday, finance ministry officials also announced measures to prop up the property sector, allowing local governments to use funds from special bonds to buy unsold homes and idle land.

In late September, the central bank announced measures including cuts in the minimum down payment ratio to 15% for all buyers.

($1 = 7.1161 Chinese yuan renminbi)