BEIJING (Reuters) -China’s financial regulator urged institutions to boost support for consumption, promising in a statement on Friday to properly relax consumer credit quotas and loan terms as it offers long-term backing to make available large sums.
The National Financial Regulatory Administration (NFRA) added that it encouraged financial institutions to provide loan renewal support to eligible borrowers of personal consumption loans.
Financial institutions should “help boost consumption, better meet financial needs in the consumer sector” to implement the work requirments from the central leadership, it said.
Institutions should also increase credit supply to consumer service industries such as wholesale and retail, accommodation and catering, cultural and tourism, education, health and elderly care, the NFRA said.
Spurring reluctant Chinese consumers to spend has been elevated to the top of Beijing’s to-do list for 2025, as lawmakers look to rectify imbalances in the world’s second-largest economy.
Beijing last week promised greater efforts to boost consumption in the face of an escalating trade war with the U.S., but analysts expect deflationary pressures to drag on.
Financial institutions should also expand the types of products and services to help residents’ increase goods and services consumption, it said.
(Reporting by Ziyi Tang and Ryan Woo; Editing by Clarence Fernandez and Stephen Coates)
