The central bank lowered the interest rate of small refinancing for agricultural support

　　Industry insiders say this is not "interest rate cut"

　　On December 7, the latest re-lending and rediscount rate table released by the Monetary Policy Department of the Central Bank showed that the three-month, six-month, and one-year re-lending interest rates for agricultural and small-scale refinancing were 1.7%, 1.9%, and 1.9%, respectively. 2%, the interest rate will be implemented on the same day.

Compared with the reloan interest rate announced by the central bank on July 1 last year, this means that the central bank will lower the reloan interest rate for agriculture and small businesses by 0.25 percentage points since December 7.

This is the first time that the People's Bank of China has lowered the interest rates of refinancing for agriculture and small businesses again after more than a year.

In July 2020, the central bank lowered the interest rate on refinancing for agriculture and small businesses by 0.25 percentage point.

The table of refinancing and rediscount rates also shows that the financial stability refinancing rate is 1.75%, and the rediscount rate is 2%, which is the same as the previous period.

　　Refinancing is China's unique monetary policy tool

　　It is understood that re-lending is a unique monetary policy tool in China. Since it is the funds that the central bank lends to commercial banks and then commercial banks lend to ordinary customers, it is called "re-lending."

　　Agricultural re-loan refers to loans issued by the central bank to various rural financial institutions.

The central bank began to issue agricultural re-loans in 1999. It was originally only used as a monetary policy operating tool to support rural credit cooperatives in improving credit services for supporting agriculture, strengthening the financial strength of supporting agriculture, and promoting the sustained and rapid development of the "three rural" economy.

After more than ten years of development, continuous breakthroughs in its connotation and extension have gradually developed into an important tool for the central bank to support the development of rural finance.

　　The target for granting small-scale reloans is four types of local corporate financial institutions, including small urban commercial banks, rural commercial banks, rural cooperative banks, and village banks.

The conditions for supporting small- and micro-business loans are set as that financial institutions must realize the “three no-lows” in loans to small and micro enterprises, that is, the growth rate of loans to small and micro enterprises shall not be lower than the average growth rate of various loans, and the number of loans to small and micro enterprises shall not be lower than that The number of households in the same period last year, and the loan acquisition rate of small and micro enterprises was not lower than the level of the same period last year.

The period is set to three levels of 3 months, 6 months, and 1 year. The period can be extended twice, and the period can be up to 3 years.

In order to reflect the preferential interest rate granted to financial institutions for loans to small and micro enterprises, the interest rate for refinancing small and micro-enterprises is determined at a reduced point on the basis of the benchmark lending interest rate announced by the central bank.

　　Help reduce the capital cost of small and medium banks

　　Wen Bin, the chief researcher of Minsheng Bank, said that after the overall RRR cut, the central bank yesterday lowered the interest rate on refinancing for agriculture and small businesses by 0.25 percentage points, reflecting the pertinence and effectiveness of monetary policy.

At present, "agriculture, rural areas and farmers" and small and micro enterprises are still weak areas in economic development, and financial support needs to be further increased.

　　Wen Bin pointed out that from the perspective of volume, as of the end of September this year, the balance of reloans for supporting agriculture and small businesses was about 1.47 trillion yuan. In the fourth quarter of this year, 300 billion yuan of small reloans will be added to increase credit availability of small and medium-sized banks. Ability; from the perspective of price, lowering the interest rate for refinancing support for agriculture and small businesses will help reduce the cost of funds for small and medium-sized banks, and in turn guide small and medium-sized banks to lower the loan interest rates for agriculture, rural areas and small businesses, and give better play to their monetary policy. The role of "precise drip irrigation" and "direct entity".

　　This interest rate cut is not a "rate cut"

　　Can the lowering of the refinancing interest rate for supporting agriculture and small businesses be regarded as an "interest rate cut" in the policy interest rate?

Many people in the industry believe that it cannot be counted.

Zhang Xu, chief fixed-income analyst at Everbright Securities, said that my country’s central bank’s policy interest rate system consists of open market operating interest rates (short-term policy interest rates) and MLF interest rates (medium-term policy interest rates). Re-lending and rediscount rates are not policy interest rates.

In the current monetary policy transmission mechanism, the central bank mainly releases interest rate control signals through policy interest rates such as medium-term lending facilitation (MLF) and open market reverse repurchase, and guides market benchmark interest rates such as DR007 to operate with the policy interest rate as the center, which ultimately affects loans. Interest rates of other financial products.

The MLF interest rate is not only the interest rate of the central bank's operating tool, but also the operating goal of monetary policy, and it is also a component of LPR.

Therefore, when observing the policy orientation, we should first pay attention to whether the interest rate has changed, not the re-lending rate.

　　Text/Reporter Cheng Jie