MNI BRIEF: China Cities Must Ensure Housing Project Delivery
Local governments must look at ongoing housing projects facing difficulty to deliver, either increasing financing support to ensure completion, or processing judicial disposal, said Dong Jianguo, vice minister of Housing and Urban-Rural Development at a press conference on Friday.
City governments should include promising projects in the “white list” scheme of loan support, and promote insolvent projects to enter bankruptcy or reorganisation procedure, said Dong.
Apart from a newly established CNY300 billion re-lending programme by the People’s Bank of China on the same day to support local SOEs in acquiring housing stocks, local governments are also allowed to use special bonds for the acquisition of idle lands from developers at reasonable prices, according to Liu Guohong, vice minister of Natural Resources. These lands will be used to build affordable housing and public infrastructures, Liu added.