(Yicai) Jan. 26 -- China’s financial regulator has pledged its support for the country’s ailing real estate sector, including measures to help developers and homebuyers, and small businesses.

The National Administration of Financial Regulation supports local authorities to adopt city-specific policies, further improving down payment ratios, mortgage rates, and other personal housing loan policies and guiding banks to better serve homebuyers, Deputy Director Xiao Yuanqi told reporters yesterday.

The NAFR will guide financial institutions to make good and full use of existing financial support policies, continue to provide good real estate financial services, keep property lending steady overall, meet reasonable financing needs, and contribute to the property market’s stable and healthy development through financial strength, Xiao said.

At the same press conference, Guo Wuping, head of the NAFR’s inclusive finance department, said banks should at least match the growth in other types of lending when increasing the scale of inclusive loans for micro and small businesses and in agriculture. Lenders should renew loans to privately held micro and small companies if possible and if the request makes sense, he noted. 

The NAFR will go on guiding banks to ease collateral requirements, increase the issuance of credit loans, and gradually increase the share of credit loans to micro and small businesses, Guo added.

The NAFR is continuously deepening the reform of commercial pension finance, with significant support for the development of insurance annuities, said Yin Jiang'ao, head of its property insurance regulation department. The regulator also supports insurers to give full play to their advantages in long-term and stable investment and in pension risk management to continuously expand the supply of commercial annuities, he added.

The NAFR will also conduct pilot projects for pension wealth management products, promote the development of pilot projects for specific pension savings, and start commercial pension business pilots, Yin noted. In addition, the watchdog will promote the normal operation of exclusive commercial pension insurance, Yin said.

Editors: Xu Wei, Martin Kadiev