Chinese stocks lower at midday on reserve ratio hike
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Chinese shares fell in morning session Wednesday, led by banking and property stocks, after the central bank said late Tuesday it would order banks set aside more reserves as a lending boom has aroused inflationary expectations and concern about asset bubbles.
The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index plummeted by 2.32 percent, or 75.96 points, to close at 3,198.01 points.
The Shenzhen Component Index dropped by 2.28 percent, or 305.13 points, to close at 13,076.12 points.
Banking shares slumped across the board by 5.01 percent, led by Bank of Beijing which dropped by 6.52 percent. Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC),the country's largest commercial bank, sank 3.93 percent to 5.13 yuan, while Bank of China (BOC) lost 3.47 percent to 4.17 yuan.
Shares of property developers declined by 2.49 percent. China Vanke Co., the country's largest property developer by market value, sank 2.72 percent to 10.1 yuan. Poly Real Estate Group Co., the country's second largest developer, lost 3.33 percent to 20.60 yuan.
Zhou Binglin, an analyst with the Guosen Securities, said the reserve ratio increase would surely bring about short-term impact to the stock market but it is not enough to change the market trend, because the overall situation of China's economic recovery is rather optimistic and the liquidity is far from inadequate.
Chinese lenders extended a record 9.21 trillion yuan of loans in the first 11 months of last year, 5.06 trillion yuan more than the corresponding period of 2008 and far exceeding the government target of 5 trillion yuan for the whole 2009.
Reserve requirements will increase by 0.5 percent from Jan. 18 this year, said People's Bank of China (PBOC). The existing ratio is 15.5 percent for big financial institutions and 13.5 percent for small and medium-sized ones.
The increase excludes small financial institutions such as the rural credit cooperatives to support the agriculture sector.
This is the first time that the PBOC raised the ratio since June of 2008. It has cut the reserve requirements for four times in the second half of 2008 to stimulate growth as the global financial crisis started to weigh on the economy.
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