BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s finance ministry will detail plans on fiscal stimulus to boost the economy at a highly-expected news conference on Saturday, the government’s main information office said on Wednesday, signalling more forceful policies to revive growth.
The announcement came after a media briefing held by the country’s top economic planner on Tuesday, which disappointed investors as officials refrained from announcing major new steps to get the shaky economy back on more stable footing.
Finance Minister Lan Fo’an will attend the press conference, the State Council Information Office said in a notice. The theme of the news conference is “intensifying countercyclical adjustment of fiscal policy to promote high-quality economic development.”
Chinese stocks pared losses made earlier in the session on the announcement of the news conference, which is scheduled for 10 a.m. (0200 GMT).
Markets have been waiting for details on what fiscal policies the government will roll out and how large they will be, after the central bank and other regulators in late September announced the most aggressive monetary stimulus measures since COVID-19 and steps to revive the property market, including interest rate cuts.
Premier Li Qiang on Tuesday held two separate meetings to urge government departments to improve policy coordination and said China will unveil specific plans for policies that are being studied.
The world’s second-largest economy has sputtered since the second quarter this year, weighing on household spending and business sentiment amid a severe property downturn and appearing on track to fall short of the government’s target of growth of around 5%.
To battle the strong deflationary pressures and faltering growth momentum, China plans to issue special bonds worth about 2 trillion yuan ($283.43 billion) to support household consumption and help local governments tackle their debt problems, Reuters reported last month.
Separately, Bloomberg News reported that China is also considering the injection up to 1 trillion yuan of capital into its biggest state banks to increase their capacity to support the struggling economy, primarily by issuing new special sovereign bonds.
In recent weeks, speculation has been rife in financial markets that the stimulus package being prepared could be even larger than what had been reported by media, though there had been no official communication over the size of any new fiscal support measures.
($1 = 7.0565 renminbi)