February LPR (Loan Market Quote Rate) was announced as scheduled. On February 21, the central bank announced that the central bank authorized the National Interbank Funding Center to announce that on February 21, 2022, the one-year LPR was 3.7%, and the 5-year LPR was 4.6%. Both terms are the same as the previous one. month flat. The above LPRs are valid until the next LPR is issued.
This quotation is in line with expectations. As early as a few days ago, the central bank continued to make MLF (Medium-Term Lending Facility) at a par, and the market predicted that the LPR would likely remain stable this month.
“The main reason is that the effect of the central bank’s RRR cuts and interest rate cuts continued to be released. The financial data in January was strong, and the supply and demand of financing in the real economy were booming, indicating that finance continued to provide strong support for the recovery of the real economy, and the urgency to guide the further reduction of credit interest rates in the short term is not high. ” said Zhou Maohua, a macro researcher at the Financial Market Department of China Everbright Bank.
At present, the full resumption of work after the holiday has just started, and it is in the policy observation period after the previous interest rate cut. Wang Hao, a senior macro analyst, said that for now, it is appropriate to keep lending rates unchanged. LPR is not the cause of changes in the volume and price of the currency market. To a certain extent, it is actually the effect, but it has a certain degree of independence. At present, the starting point of “easy credit” is to boost the financing needs of the real economy sector, especially the corporate sector. Therefore, the probability and magnitude of further reduction in the LPR in the later stage will be greater than the money market interest rate represented by the MLF interest rate. This will depend on the specific performance of major economic and financial data from January to February.
“If the interest rate needs to be lowered again, the time point may be in mid-March.” Wang Hao predicted.
From the perspective of the industry, from the current point of view, LPR remains stable, and its impact on the market is relatively limited.
At present, the stability of the property market is the main keynote. On January 20, 2022, the LPR 5-year quoted interest rate will be reduced by 5 basis points, which will reduce the cost of house purchase to a certain extent; the implementation of the mortgage policy of some financial institutions in China will be corrected in a timely manner; In view of the property market situation, we will make reasonable adjustments to mortgage interest rates due to urban policies, and continue to implement the “three stability” tasks of the property market. Zhou Maohua said that from the property market credit data, a series of policies to stabilize the property market have shown some effects, real estate financing is improving, market confidence is picking up, and the property market is expected to bottom out.
Wang Hao also said that the direct benefit to the real estate market caused by the reduction of LPR’s reduction in mortgage interest rates is relatively limited. Its significance is to improve expectations, suggesting that there may be a systematic marginal recovery in policies. However, the bottom line of the policy of “housing, not speculating” has not been loosened, so it cannot be over-interpreted.
The central bank’s latest report on the implementation of China’s monetary policy in the fourth quarter of 2021 disclosed that in 2021, the growth rate of real estate loans will be generally stable. At the end of 2021, the balance of real estate loans of major financial institutions (including foreign capital) in the country was 52.2 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 7.9%, and the growth rate was 3.7 percentage points lower than that at the end of the previous year. Among them, the balance of personal housing loans was 38.3 trillion yuan, an increase of 11.3% year-on-year, and the growth rate was 3.3 percentage points lower than that at the end of the previous year; the balance of housing development loans was 9.1 trillion yuan, an increase of 0.5% year-on-year, and the growth rate was 7.7 percentage points lower than that at the end of the previous year.
Regarding the follow-up trend of LPR quotation interest rate, Zhou Maohua believes that further data guidance is needed, and attention is paid to the financing needs of the real economy and the recovery of domestic demand. However, it will continue to release the dividends of the LPR reform and give full play to the effect of structural tools on economic support, optimize the credit structure, and improve the efficiency of policy support.
In Wang Hao’s opinion, the future direction of monetary policy mainly depends on the effect of “steady growth” of the economy. “Stable growth” is an aggregate target, so it needs to be supported by aggregate-based monetary policy tools. At present, liquidity in the money market remains abundant, but the main contradiction lies in the lack of credit demand in the real economy. Therefore, price-based tools (cutting interest rates) are better than quantitative tools (cutting RRR).
“There is still a possibility of interest rate cuts from the end of the first quarter to the beginning of the second quarter, but the window period is shrinking. After the stable growth work is successfully completed, the focus of monetary policy will shift to structural adjustment, and the most important work is naturally the dual carbon goals and High-quality development. There is a high probability that the follow-up funds will remain reasonably sufficient, but we need to pay attention to the changes in the rhythm of the Fed’s monetary policy.” Wang Hao said.
This has also been mentioned in the central bank’s monetary policy implementation report for the fourth quarter of 2021. The central bank pointed out that the impact of macro policy changes in major developed economies is an important external uncertainty in 2022, and set the monetary policy for the next stage. First, it is necessary to maintain a stable growth of the total amount of money and credit. Improve the money supply control mechanism, maintain reasonably sufficient liquidity, guide financial institutions to vigorously expand loan issuance, enhance the stability of the growth of total credit, maintain the growth rate of money supply and social financing scale basically match the nominal economic growth rate, and maintain macro leverage rate is basically stable.
Second, we must maintain the steady optimization of the credit structure. Structural monetary policy tools are actively “additional”, implement market-oriented policy tools to support small and micro enterprises, make good use of carbon emission reduction support tools and special re-lending to support the clean and efficient use of coal, and guide financial institutions to increase credit growth in areas with slow credit growth. We will increase the support for small and micro enterprises, technological innovation and green development with precise efforts.
The third is to promote the reduction of the comprehensive financing cost of enterprises. Improve the formation and transmission mechanism of market-oriented interest rates, give full play to the efficiency of the reform of interest rates quoted in the loan market, stabilize the cost of bank liabilities, and guide corporate loan interest rates to decline.
Beijing Business Daily reporter Liu SihongReturn to Sohu, see more
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