Yesterday, the people's Bank of China authorized the national interbank lending center to release the quoted interest rate (LPR) of the loan market with a newly formed mechanism for the first time -- 4.25% for one-year term and 4.85% for more than five-year term. Previously, the 1-year LPR remained at 4.31% for a long time.
At the regular policy briefing of the State Council held on the same day, Liu Guoqiang, vice president of the people's Bank of China, said that after years of continuous promotion, China's market-oriented reform of interest rates has made important progress. Most banks have established relatively perfect loan pricing models, significantly improved their independent pricing ability, and the time to reform and improve the LPR formation mechanism is ripe, which can be said to be natural. On August 17, the people's Bank of China announced to reform and improve the LPR formation mechanism. There are three main considerations in this reform: first, improve the marketization of LPR. Second, promote banks to use LPR. Third, resolutely break the implicit lower limit of loan interest rate.
"One thing is certain, the interest rate of housing loans will not fall." Liu Guoqiang stressed that the focus of interest rate marketization is to reduce the financing cost of the real economy. For the real estate market, the mortgage interest rate has changed from the reference benchmark interest rate to the reference LPR, but the final loan interest rate level should remain basically stable. " We should not deviate from the target orientation of "real estate without speculation". At the same time, we should avoid using real estate as a tool and not use it as a means to stimulate the economy. In terms of specific operation, he disclosed that the people's Bank of China will issue an announcement on the interest rate policy of individual housing loans on the basis of full research in the near future.
The use of LPR undoubtedly puts forward higher requirements for banks. Liu Guoqiang believes that the new policy may lead to a decline in bank interest margin in the short term and affect bank profits. However, in the long run, it is good, because as a service industry relying on the real economy, if the financing cost of the real economy decreases, the service objects of the bank will increase, the development of the real economy will improve, the non-performing rate of bank credit will decrease, and the credit quality will improve.