On May 20, the People’s Bank of China cut the one-year loan prime rate (LPR) to 3.0 percent from 3.1 percent, while cutting the five-year LPR to 3.5 percent from 3.6 percent, marking the first reduction in rates since the cut by 25 basis points in October last year.
The fall in the LPR will further reduce the cost of financing for enterprises and residents, which will boost market confidence and support the stable growth of the real economy.
The move by the PBOC aims to support the struggling real estate market, which posted a 10.3 percent drop in real estate investments in the January-April period this year, versus a 9.9 percent decline in the first. Also, new construction starts were still sharply down, by 23.8 percent year on year, only 0.1 percentage point slower than the decline recorded in the January-March period this year.
The impact on the real estate market from the fresh stimuli may be delayed, so the support for the steel market seen for the moment is almost non-existent. “A series of policy supports are on the way, while the [steel] market reaction still follows a weak demand logic, and so both export and local markets have followed a narrow range of changes since January,” a Chinese trader noted. Steel futures prices fell slightly early this week and were rather stable today, May 21.