Beijing sees improved external debt structure

Structural issue: People walk by a Bank of China branch in Shanghai. The proportion of the country’s medium and long-term debt was 47% at end-September, up three percentage points from the end of June. — AFP

BEIJING: China’s outstanding foreign debt stood at approximately US$2.7 trillion (RM11.24 trillion) by the end of September, data from the country’s foreign-exchange regulator shows.

The figure was US$16.7bil (RM69.58bil), or 0.6%, higher than that seen at the end of June, according to the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE).

The scale of China’s foreign debt maintained general stability and the structure of external debt improved in the third quarter, said Wang Chunying, deputy director and spokesperson of SAFE.

The proportion of medium and long-term debt was 47%, up three percentage points from the end of June, Wang said, stressing that the increase further enhanced structural stability.

Foreign investors increasing their holdings of yuan-denominated bonds reflected the opening-up achievements of China’s bond market and investor confidence in China’s economic outlook, Wang said.

Wang warned that the international situation is expected to be complex and grim, given the resurgence of the Covid-19 pandemic and the gradual exits of some developed economies from the easing of monetary policies.

Despite the external pressure, the fundamentals of China’s long-term economic development will remain unchanged, thanks to its strong economic resilience, Wang said, vowing that the country will pay close attention to the changes in foreign debt and take concrete steps to ward off cross-border financing risks.

Meanwhile, Chinese bankers’ confidence in the macroeconomic climate weakened in the fourth quarter of 2021, data from a recent central bank survey showed.

The bankers’ macroeconomic heat index for the period stood at 35.3%, down 3.4 percentage points quarter-on-quarter, according to the questionnaire survey conducted nationwide by the People’s Bank of China (PBoC).

Among the surveyed bankers, some 65.8% deemed the current macroeconomic climate as “normal,” a decline of six percentage points from the third quarter.

For the first quarter of 2022, the index is projected at 41.3%, six percentage points higher than that of the fourth quarter of 2021.

A majority of Chinese residents think home prices will stay unchanged or fall in the first quarter of 2022, said a recent central bank survey.

Among the 20,000 urban bank depositors surveyed in 50 cities across China, 56.7% of respondents expect home prices to remain flat during the first quarter, while 15.2% forecast a fall, according to the survey conducted by the PBoC.

Some 16.8% of respondents expect an increase in home prices.

Sticking to the principle of “housing is for living in, not for speculation,” China has adopted a slew of measures to cool once red-hot home prices and promote the healthy development of the property sector over the past few years.

China will support the property market to better cater to the reasonable demand of home buyers and adopt city-specific policies to boost the virtuous cycle and healthy development of the sector, according to the annual Central Economic Work Conference last month.

China’s tourism and related industries declined dragged by the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, official data showed.

The added value of tourism and related industries in China amounted to about 4.06 trillion yuan (RM2.66 trillion) in 2020, down 9.7% from one year earlier, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. — Xinhua