China’s central bank cut interest rates for corporate and housing loans on Monday to shore up the economy amid a prolonged slump in the real estate market.
The People’s Bank of China trimmed the 1-year loan prime rate, or LPR, by a quarter of a percentage point to 3.1 percent. It serves as a benchmark for commercial lenders when offering loans to businesses.
The bank also cut the 5-year LPR by the same margin to 3.6 percent. That’s a key rate for mortgage loans. Both rates were previously reduced in July.
The central bank already pared the 7-day reverse repo rate for short-term funding to commercial lenders late last month. The bank has set this as its new main policy rate.
China announced on Friday that the world’s second-largest economy grew by 4.6 percent in the July-to-September period from a year earlier in inflation-adjusted terms.
The pace of expansion was slightly slower than the previous quarter and it fell short of the government’s target of around 5 percent for this year.