China To Reduce Reserve Requirement Ratio

(RTTNews) - China is set to lower the reserve requirement ratio for banks providing support for rural economy and medium-sized enterprises, the State Council said in a statement after a meeting chaired by Premier Li Keqiang.

Policy makers will "appropriately" lower the reserve requirement and it pledged to continue a prudent monetary policy and make timely pro-cyclical fine-tuning moves. No further details about RRR were provided.

The People's Bank of China had reduced RRR for rural commercial banks by 2 percentage points and rural cooperative banks by 0.5 percentage points in April.

Re-lending facility for smaller companies will be set up this year, it said. The council added the nation is facing "relatively big" downward pressure.

The government also said the nation will cut social financing costs and retain reasonable growth in credit.