MNI China Press Digest, April 17: Home Price, PBOC, Tax Income

     BEIJING (MNI) - The following lists highlights from China press reports on

Wednesday:

     Chinese house prices could continue to ramp higher as the property market

and wider economy continue to improve, although the government should use

regulations to prevent further increases, according to Sheng Songcheng, the

former director of the Survey and Statistics Division of the PBOC. In a

commentary published today in the Economic Information Daily, Shen said

policymakers could increase supply instead of dampening demand, in addition to

preventing a deluge of funds from flowing in to the real estate sector.

     The PBOC is expected to guide banks to adjust their credit structures as

well as tighten the monitoring of capital flows, Securities Times said in a

front page commentary today. The newspaper pointed to a record high number of

new short-term loans in the household sector as a source of risk which could

develop into an asset price bubble. China's monetary policy is unlikely to be

tightened in the short term, though the PBOC is also under less pressure to

further loosen policy settings, the commentary added.

     A big fall in tax income growth in Q1 of this year was mainly due to the

scale of tax cuts, the Securities Daily said in a front page report today.

Citing data from the Ministry of Finance, the newspaper reported that China's Q1

tax income growth slowed to 5.4% y/y, well down from the 17.3% gain in the same

period last year. The tax take from individual tax fell 29.7% y/y in Q1, with

about 84 million taxpayers exempted from paying individual tax as the government

raised the tax threshold, the newspaper said. The growth of VAT income also

decelerated to 10.7%, compared with 20.1% in Q1 2018.

--MNI Beijing Bureau; +86 (10) 8532-5998; email: wanxia.lin@marketnews.com

--MNI Sydney Bureau; +61 405322399; email: lachlan.colquhoun.ext@marketnews.com

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