The central bank cuts the RRR to release trillions of funds, but the real estate credit environment is difficult to improve significantly-Finance News

Original title: The central bank cuts the RRR in an all-round way to release trillions of funds, but the real estate credit environment is difficult to improve significantly

Source: Times Weekly

Small and medium-sized enterprises with financing difficulties and expensive financing will have a “happy” weekend.

On the evening of July 9, the People’s Bank of China decided to “comprehensively lower the RRR”, that is, from July 15th, except for some county financial institutions that have implemented a 5% deposit reserve ratio, the deposit reserve ratio of other financial institutions will be reduced by 0.5. percentage point. After this reduction, the weighted average deposit reserve ratio of financial institutions is 8.9%, which will release about 1 trillion yuan in long-term funds.

The RRR cut will effectively increase market liquidity and will also lower the level of market interest rates, which will help reduce the cost of financial institutions’ liabilities and corporate financing costs.

For the market, this can be described as “a long drought meets the rain.” This is the first time this year’s RRR cut, and also the first time since April last year, after 14 months. Times Finance found that this is also the longest time between RRR cuts since 2018. From 2018 to 2020, the RRR will be lowered three times a year, with an interval of less than 6 months.

The RRR cut was signaled at the State Council executive meeting held on July 7. The meeting decided that in response to the impact of commodity price increases on the production and operation of enterprises, it is necessary to use monetary policy tools such as RRR cuts to further strengthen financial support for the real economy, especially for small, medium and micro enterprises, on the basis of not engaging in flood irrigation. Facilitate a steady decline in comprehensive financing costs.

However, the RRR cut far exceeded market expectations. At that time, many people in the industry believed that in recent years, the central bank’s commonly used means to strengthen liquidity was the medium-term lending facility (MLF) and open market operations, rather than the “heavy tool” of RRR cuts. Therefore, the industry speculates that the RRR cut may be a targeted RRR cut rather than a full RRR cut.

For example, Guan Qingyou, director of the Institute of Financial Research and chief economist, posted on Sina Weibo that the RRR cut was faster and stronger than expected, indicating that the economic downturn is highly valued. “I was too optimistic about the economy in the first half of the year, and the revenue was a bit tough. In the second half of the year, it is necessary to moderately loosen the currency and loosen credit.”

However, the relevant person in charge of the People’s Bank of China said that the orientation of prudent monetary policy has not changed. The purpose of this RRR cut is to optimize the capital structure of financial institutions, improve financial service capabilities, and better support the real economy. The People’s Bank of China insists on the stability and effectiveness of the monetary policy, adheres to the normal monetary policy, and does not engage in flooding.

The specifics are as follows: First, while maintaining reasonable and abundant liquidity, strengthen the capital allocation capabilities of financial institutions, and create a suitable monetary and financial environment for high-quality development and supply-side structural reforms. The second is to adjust the financing structure of the central bank, effectively increase the long-term stable funding sources for financial institutions to support the real economy, and guide financial institutions to actively use the RRR cut funds to increase support for small and micro enterprises. The third is that the RRR cut has reduced the funding cost of financial institutions by approximately 13 billion yuan per year, and transmission through financial institutions can promote the reduction of social comprehensive financing costs.

Judging from the above statement, even if the RRR cut is a rare comprehensive cut in recent years, the general drop does not seem to flow into the real estate sector where financing is severely tightened.

Xu Xiaole, chief analyst of the Shell Research Institute, said that the RRR cut will not have a significant impact on the real estate market. On the one hand, part of the funds released by the RRR cut will be used by financial institutions to return the maturing medium-term loan facility (MLF), and part of the funds will be used to make up for the liquidity gap caused by the peak of the tax period in mid-to-late July, and increase financial institutions The total amount of liquidity in the banking system will remain basically stable. On the other hand, real estate loan concentration management has a clear upper limit on the proportion of real estate loans for different banks, and banks need to strictly implement them. Under this premise, the RRR cut will not have a significant impact on the real estate credit environment.

On January 1 this year, the real estate loan concentration management system policy was formally implemented, and corresponding upper limits were set for the proportion of the balance of real estate loans of financial institutions and the proportion of personal housing loans to improve the resilience and robustness of the financial system and promote the stability of the real estate market Healthy development will promote the balanced development of finance and real estate with the real economy.

The New Deal has been implemented for more than half a year, and the problem of excessive inflow of funds into the real estate market has been initially reversed by cracking down on operating loans and microfinance that illegally flowed into the property market. The banking industry is already feeling the pressure. In the first half of this year, many banks in many places raised mortgage interest rates. Bank mortgage business in hot second-tier cities also showed signs of tightening. Some banks suspended second-hand housing loan business, and some even suspended accepting new housing mortgage business.

However, Yan Yuejin, research director of the Think Tank Center of E-House Research Institute, reminded that in view of the frequent use of small and micro enterprise loans to support housing loans in disguise in the past two years, it is expected that there will be more new ways of controlling the flow of such funds in the future. For example, it is necessary to pay special attention to companies that have not been registered for a long time and have no actual operation, especially those that have been registered by individuals, and severely crack down on various types of small and micro enterprise credit resources to invest in housing purchases in disguise.

However, the “general drop in the rain” is still positive for the real estate industry. Li Yujia, chief researcher of the Guangdong Provincial Housing Policy Research Center, believes that the RRR cut will increase banks’ enthusiasm for lending, ease the backlog of housing loans, reduce the upward trend of housing loan interest rates, and help developers to pay back, moderately increase developers’ enthusiasm for land acquisition and construction, and correct real estate. The financial accelerator effect prevents the rapid decline of social financing.

Editor in charge: Zhang Yanan