BEIJING (Reuters) -China will step up policy support for the real economy, central bank official Ruan Jianhong said on Wednesday, adding that the macro leverage ratio was expected to rise amid efforts to revive the slowing economy.
The remarks came against the backdrop of a pledge by Yi Gang, the governor of the People’s Bank of China, to keep monetary policy accommodative to support the economic recovery.
“We will use various monetary policy tools in a timely and flexible manner, give better play to the dual functions of aggregate and structural tools, boost support for the real economy,” Ruan, head of the statistics department, said.
In the first quarter of 2022, China’s macro leverage ratio was at 277.1%, 4.6 percentage points higher than the end of the previous year, Ruan told a briefing.
The leverage ratio will rise periodically due to slowing growth and counter-cyclical policies, but a recovery in the economy will create conditions for maintaining a reasonable debt level in the future, she added.
The bank will keep liquidity reasonably ample and push financial institutions to lower financing costs for firms, Zou Lan, head of its monetary policy department, said at the briefing.
(Reporting by Kevin Yao; Editing by Andrew Heavens and Clarence Fernandez)
