China cuts 1-year benchmark rate, moving to boost economy

FILE – A woman walks by China’s central bank, or the People’s Bank of China in Beijing, Tuesday, Feb. 20, 2024. China’s central bank cut key interest rates in a surprise move Monday, July 22, 2024 aimed at injecting new life into its ailing property sector, while the ruling Communist Party released details of a top-level meeting focused on strategies for revving up the slowing economy. (AP Photo/Andy Wong, File)

BANGKOK — China ratcheted up its effort to reinvigorate its economy Thursday by cutting a key policy rate and interest paid on bank deposits.

The move coincided with a downturn in world stocks, extending losses in Chinese markets that have declined this year while share prices soared in many other countries.

By midday, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was down 1.4% and the Shanghai Composite index lost 0.4%.

READ: China central bank says cuts two key rates to support economy

The People’s Bank of China said it cut the lending rate for one-year medium term policy loans by 20 basis points to 2.3%. That is the biggest rate cut since China’s economy was slammed by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

The rate on 7-day loans was reduced to 1.7%.

Major state-run banks cut deposit rates to relieve pressure on their finances, reducing the rate paid on one-year fixed deposits by 10 basis points to 1.35%, the official Xinhua News Agency reported, citing official rates released Thursday by the country’s “Big Four” banks: Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Agricultural Bank of China, Bank of China and China Construction Bank.

The banks cut deposit rates three times last year and this was the first reduction for 2024, it said.

But while lower deposit rates may be good for the bank’s balance sheets they won’t encourage more consumer spending — the one thing most economists agree is needed to help revive growth that has been falling for years and was hit especially hard by a downturn in China’s property sector.

READ: Economic retaliation by China is unlikely, according to analyst

“Banks are already passing on lower deposit rates to savers: which will do nothing to encourage spending in the current environment, and people will instead save even more to generate the same return they were earning before,” RaboResearch said in a commentary.

Growth in the world’s second-largest economy slowed to 4.7% in the last quarter, down from 5.3% in January-March.

Earlier this week, the central bank cut several of its other lending rates, sticking to a cautious approach to stimulating the economy.

The flurry of rate cuts this week followed a major policy-setting meeting of the ruling Communist Party last week that laid out ambitious plans for reforms in many areas of the economy but did not spell out any specific plans for stimulus driven by government spending.