An artwork juxtaposing Chinese yuan cash bills with the China’s flag
Javier Ghersi | Moment | Getty Images
China’s financial institutions should provide strong support to the country’s beleaguered real estate sector and not “blindly withdraw” financing for projects facing difficulties, according to a senior Chinese financial regulatory official.
His strongly worded comments follow the Chinese central bank’s largest cut in mandatory cash reserves for banks since 2021. Beijing also recently released a fresh policy mandate aimed at easing the cash crunch for Chinese developers, which have struggled under the crackdown on the sector’s bloated debt.
“The financial industry has an unshirkable responsibility and must provide strong support,” said Xiao Yuanqi, deputy director of China’s National Financial Regulatory Administration, at a press conference in Beijing on Thursday, according to a CNBC translation.
“We all know the real estate industry chain is long and involves a wide range of areas. It has an important impact on the national economy and is closely related to people’s lives,” he added.
China’s real estate troubles are closely intertwined with local government finances since they typically relied on land sales to developers for a significant portion of revenue.
The property market slumped after Beijing cracked down on developers’ high reliance on debt for growth in 2020, weighing on consumer growth and broader growth in the world’s second-largest economy.
“For projects that are in difficulty but whose funds can be balanced, we should not blindly withdraw loans, suppress loans, or cut off loans,” Xiao said. “We should provide greater support through extending existing loans, adjusting repayment arrangements, and adding new loans.”
Still, Xiao cautioned the latest relaxation of funding guidelines, which is only valid through the end of the year, is designed to be targeted.
“China’s state banks will issue operating property loans to real estate companies on the basis of controllable risks and commercial sustainability,” Xiao said.
“Eligible property developers may then use these loans to repay existing loans of real estate companies and open market bonds they have issued,” he said.
China’s Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development held a meeting Friday morning that emphasized again that local regions could adapt the newly release property policy guidelines as needed, according to official reports.
While not new, the meeting is among several this week — pointing to official efforts to speed up implementation of recent policy announcements.
Beijing’s stimulus announcement on Wednesday also marked a rare decision to release news at a press briefing, suggesting the Chinese government is signaling its intent at a time when the country’s stock markets are teetering on the edge of capitulation.
Such policy moves are typically only published online and disseminated via state media. But the People’s Bank of China Governor Pan Gongsheng announced the forthcoming reserve ratio requirement cut and real estate policy in person.
Last week, Chinese Premier Li Qiang announced the country’s annual GDP growth figure in his address at the World Economic Forum in Davos — a day before China’s National Bureau of Statistics was scheduled to release the country’s official GDP print and other data.
— CNBC’s Evelyn Cheng contributed to this story.
HOLYOKE — Amid a financial crisis in Holyoke, city Auditor Tanya Wdowiak gave her two weeks’ notice to the mayor and City Council president on Thursday.
Holyoke Mayor Joshua Garcia said Thursday that he received Wdowiak’s email resignation but hasn’t had a chance to talk with her.
Garcia said he came into the office to an email that requested he accept her formal resignation, effective Nov. 28.
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WASHINGTON — The government shutdown is creating a lot of uncertainty and disruption for Alaska Native communities, and for tribal organizations that administer federal programs.
These include SNAP, for food assistance, and the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which subsidizes energy bills.
Ben Mallott, president of the Alaska Federation of Natives, said the prospect that both of those programs would run out of money, just as winter begins, puts some Alaskans in a life-threatening bind.
“Without LIHEAP, without SNAP, our communities, our tribal citizens will have to decide between fuel and food,” he testified to the Senate Indian Affairs Committee Wednesday.
During the pandemic, the Federal Subsistence Board allowed emergency hunting to improve food security. Now, with the government shutdown, Mallott said the Subsistence Board can’t even meet to consider it.
Since the second Trump administration began, advocates for Native American and Alaska Native people have stressed that programs that help them aren’t D.E.I. initiatives but the result of promises, treaties and laws. Now, between the administration’s cuts to government services and the shutdown, they say the government is dodging its responsibilities.
Hearing witnesses said tribal Head Start programs will run low on money if the shutdown extends into November, and that many agency experts tribes normally turn to have lost their jobs.
Pete Upton testified about the Trump administration’s plan to abolish a fund at the Treasury Department called the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund. Upton runs the Native CDFI Network, whose Alaska members include the Cook Inlet Lending Center. He said tribal communities are often in banking deserts.
“Native CDFIs are typically the only financial institutions serving these communities, providing access to capital, credit and financial education where no alternative exists,” he said.
Early in the shutdown, the Treasury Department fired the entire staff of the CDFI Fund. With no one at the federal office to certify the CDFIs, Upton said it’s hard for the community finance organizations to attract private-sector and philanthropic investment.
Certification is “a stamp for investors to say that ‘you are investable,’” Upton said. With it, “we bring in private capital at a rate of eight to one.”
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, chair of the Indian Affairs Committee, said tribes face enormous uncertainty as the stalemate in Congress nears the one-month mark.
“We can’t figure out the path forward right now on our spending bills, although I am a little bit more optimistic on that today,” she said.
She didn’t elaborate but said earlier this week that senators are engaged in productive talks.
Police cruisers parked in the Stamford Police Department parking lot photographed on August 7, 2024.
STAMFORD — A member of the Stamford Board of Representatives said he was “disgusted” by the city’s Board of Finance’s decision to delay a potential increase in budgeted officers for the city’s police department.
“I’m angry,” said Sean Boeger, D-15, during the Board of Representatives’ Fiscal Committee meeting Monday.
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Boeger is also a sergeant in the Stamford Police Department. The increase, which was on the committee’s agenda, would have created 13 more officer positions in the department. A grant would help pay for six of the 13 new positions.
It would’ve brought the total number of officers in the patrol division from 217 to 230, resulting in a 300-person force when all other ranks are considered. In the early 2000s, the department had 314 budgeted sworn officers, according to Chief of Police Timothy Shaw.
Lou DeRubeis, Stamford’s director of public safety, health and welfare, said the proposed increase was the first “in quite a number of years.”
The Board of Finance, however, during its Oct. 9 meeting, voted to hold the increase and asked the police department to provide more information, such as where the officers would be used and the total cost of hiring them outside of wages, such as health insurance and overtime.
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Boeger said during Monday’s fiscal committee meeting that he believed there were four officers assigned to traffic enforcement because “patrol demand is so high.” He said the department should be able to double the number of officers for traffic enforcement, which he said was “the top gripe of our citizenry.”
He also said the department was “lucky if we could cover the high schools when it’s busy.”
“If we want to be responsible and we want to have the nice things that a nice city like Stamford should have…we have to do something about this,” Boeger said.
Boeger said the department had opened up testing for new positions and that the department can’t send people to police academies, whether the city’s own or others, until the new positions are approved.
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“We’re gambling with open positions based on academy availability,” Boeger said.
Amiel Goldberg, D-13, said he wanted members of the committee to reach out to the Board of Finance to “let them know how deeply disappointed and frustrated our committee is.”
There had been an attempt to add the 13 police officer positions during the most recent budget process, but the Board of Finance cut the funding for those jobs.
At that time, members of the board said to come back with the request once the department filled out the rest of their 287 budgeted officer positions. The department will reach that goal by December, Bridget Fox, chief of staff of the mayor’s office, said during the Oct. 9 meeting.
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Shaw, in an interview before the fiscal committee meeting, said getting more people for the department would mean less people have to work overtime and because of that, less people would burn out and leave the force. Half the budgeted overtime, he said, is for the patrol division.
During the Oct. 9 meeting, the chief said the 13-person increase could result in a $500,000 reduction in overtime costs.
Laura Burwick, a member of the Board of Finance, said during the Oct. 9 meeting the request of $743,941 for the new positions was “a huge additional expense to the budget” and that she wanted to “see a little bit of the analysis that went into this.”
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Geoff Alswanger, a member of the finance board, said during that meeting that there have been “many sessions” where the board had “angst at the management” of the city’s pension funds and that the board “can’t ignore that as part of this equation.”
Boeger, however, during Monday’s meeting, said the department “has no power or control over that.”
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