BEIJING: China said Thursday it would boost the credit available to the ailing property market by the end of the year and help renovate a million homes as unveiled its latest measures to shore up the struggling sector.
Beijing will "increase the credit scale of white-list projects to four trillion" yuan (US$562 billion) by the end of the year, Housing Minister Ni Hong said at a briefing in the Chinese capital.
"The urban real estate financing coordination mechanism should strive to include all eligible real-estate projects in the white-list," Ni said.
China's teetering property sector has long accounted for around a quarter of gross domestic product and experienced dazzling growth for two decades.
But a years-long housing slump has battered growth as the country's leadership eyes a target of around five percent this year – an objective analysts say is optimistic given the many headwinds the economy faces.
At Thursday's briefing, Ni offered fresh help for the ailing sector.
"An additional one million worn-out homes... will be renovated," he said.
"There are many safety hazards and poor living environments in urban villages, and people are eager to renovate," he explained.
The move, he said, would "be conducive to absorbing the existing stock of commercial housing."