A man walks by a fruits vendor waiting for customers outside a luxury housing construction site in Beijing, Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2024. 's central bank on Wednesday said it would slash another key interest rate, a day after it unveiled a raft of new measures aimed at boosting its ailing economy.
The medium-term lending facility, the interest for one-year loans to financial institutions, was cut from 2.3 percent to 2.0 percent, the People's Bank of China said in a statement on its website.
The rate was last lowered in July, with Wednesday's cut being the deepest on record. The world's second-largest economy has yet to achieve a highly anticipated post-pandemic recovery and Beijing has set a goal of 5 percent growth in 2024, an objective analysts say is optimistic given the headwinds it is facing. On Sept.
24, central bank chief Pan Gongsheng told a news conference in Beijing that the bank would introduce a series of measures to boost growth and pledged to "promote the expansion of consumption and investment." Among those measures were a reduction in the amount of cash banks must hold in reserve and the lowering of interest rates for existing mortgages. Beijing said the cut to the reserve requirement ratio, which dictates how much lenders must hold in reserve, would inject around a trillion yuan ($141.
7 billion) in long-term liquidity into the financial market. And the mortgage rate cut would benefit 150 million people across China, Pan said, as well as lower "the average annual h.
