La Banque Centrale annonce la réduction de ses taux administrés de 0,25 pt.

L’inflation est contrôlée, l’activité ralentit, le commerce extérieur est maussade et les prévisions de croissance de 7% paraissent difficile à tenir. Par ailleurs, la situation bancaire et financière est « pourrie » par les créances irrecouvrables et l’éclatement à répétitions de bulles locales et sectorielles. Le flux considérable des fuites de capitaux ne facilite guère le réglage de l’économie.

.

Le gouvernement s’accroche, au moins verbalement au mythe des réformes structurelles qui réduiraient le poids de l’investissement et de l’immobilier, cela est absurde, les réformes structurelles ont au contraire une incidence déflationniste et récessionniste, dans un premier temps. Ce n’est que plus tard, dans un second qu’elles contribuent à la croissance.

.

Il y a peu a circulé la rumeur d’une entrée de la Banque Centrale de Chine dans le non-conventionnel, avec une sorte de Quantitative Easing. C’est à notre avis à l’étude, mais prématuré; la question centrale est celle de l’incidence sur le change et le Peg avec le dollar. Sous cet aspect, un QE pourrait être très déstabilisant.

.————————-.

Bloomberg: The People’s Bank of China will reduce the one-year lending rate 0.25 percentage point to 5.1 percent, and cut the one-year deposit rate by the same amount to 2.25 percent, effective Monday, the central bank said on its website Sunday. The deposit-rate ceiling will be expanded to 150 percent of the benchmark from 130 percent, it said. Policy makers took the step after reports in recent days showed inflation remains subdued and exports and imports both slid in April — underscoring the economy’s continuing struggle to match Premier Li Keqiang’s 2015 growth target of about 7 percent. With capital flowing abroad and local governments embroiled in a complex debt cleanup, officials are turning to cheaper borrowing costs to help bolster lending.

“Economic growth is weaker than expected, and inflation is low,” said Xu Gao, the chief economist with Everbright Securities Co. in Beijing. “In fact, the rate cut is very mild with just a quarter of a percentage point, and the PBOC may have to cut interest rates again quite soon.” In a gathering of the Communist Party’s Politburo April 30, President Xi Jinping and his colleagues vowed to step up targeted measures to counter downward pressure on the economy. One area that has benefited from stimulus is China’s stock market, with the Shanghai Composite Index soaring since early March.

Structural Reforms

The leadership is juggling the need to keep growth from slipping too far with plans to press ahead with structural reforms to the economy reducing the role of investment and enhancing that of private companies, the services sector and consumer spending. One step officials have been reluctant to take is letting the yuan depreciate along with the currencies of other emerging markets in the past year, as the U.S. Federal Reserve prepares to raise interest rates. While a cheaper exchange rate may help export competitiveness, one concern is that it could unwind long-term bets on yuan gains and spur further capital flight. China is battling a property slump, excess industrial capacity, local-government debt and capital outflows, with the economy expanding at the slowest pace since 2009 in the first quarter. Consumer prices in April rose at half the pace the government is targeting for 2015, data showed Saturday.

Global Easing

The latest rate reduction adds to its own easing and that of at least 30 countries that have loosened monetary policy this year as lower commodity prices give room to stimulate. Raising the cap on what banks can pay on deposits is another step to ease the financial repression that has seen the nation’s savers effectively subsidizing debt-fueled investment. “This asymmetric interest rate cut is meant to lower firms’ funding costs further while leaving the deposit rate not much changed with a view to keep it attractive enough so as to avoid large deposit outflows to the stock market,” Liu Li-Gang, an analyst at Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd., said by e-mail. “This also shows that the PBOC intends to speed up interest rate liberalization.”