China property: Sunac, Country Garden projects among property developments added to local governments’ ‘whitelists’, to get financial support from banks

Name: SCMP
Telephone: +852-2680-8888

Inclusion in whitelists will help to ease financial pressure, promote housing delivery, allow for better capitalisation of assets and enhance projects’ sustainability, Country Garden says

‘The whitelist screening criteria are based on projects instead of developers themselves’: Fitch Ratings executive

Reading Time:3 minutes

Why you can trust SCMP

A residential project in Beijing originally developed by Shimao Group that was sold to state-owned rival China Resources Land, is seen in this file photo from December 2022. Shimao had 16 projects added to whitelists over the past week. Photo: Bloomberg

Yuke Xiein Beijing

Published: 3:33pm, 5 Feb 2024Updated: 4:16pm, 5 Feb 2024

Sunac China Holdings, Shimao Group, CIFI Group and Country Garden Holdings are among property developers whose projects have been included in “whitelists” by local governments in mainland China, a mechanism that qualifies their projects for financial support from banks.

While Beijing-based Sunac had 90 projects cleared for loan applications on Monday, Shanghai-based developers Shimao and CIFI had 16 and 18 projects, respectively, added to whitelists over the past week, according to local media reports.

Country Garden, once the mainland’s largest private property developer by sales, said over the weekend that more than 30 of its projects in the country’s eastern and southern provinces have been added to local governments’ whitelists.

“[Inclusion in the] whitelist will help to ease financial pressure on our part, promote housing delivery, allow us to better capitalise on our assets and enhance the projects’ sustainability,” Country Garden said in a statement. Shimao, CIFI and Sunac did not respond to requests for comment.

Beijing is stepping up efforts to relieve an industry-wide liquidity crunch and boost homebuyer sentiment. Authorities have been calling on provincial governments and banks to ramp up financing for China’s cash-strapped developers, after new home prices in December recorded their steepest decline in close to nine years, according to official data.

The whitelists, launched by the housing ministry at the start of the year, ask provincial governments to recommend to banks local residential projects that are deemed financially sound and fit for further loan support.