MNI China Press Digest June 10: Consumption, Property, CPI

Highlights from Chinese press reports on Tuesday:

• Beijing should accelerate issuing ultra-long-term special treasuries and allocate the funds to local governments in a timely manner, after some places reported gaps in consumption subsidies, said an Yicai.com commentary. Of this year's CNY300 billion special treasury support for the consumer goods trade-in scheme, CNY162 billion has already been distributed to provinces. Several local officials are now urging the prompt release of the remaining CNY138 billion, having exhausted their initial allocation.
• Xinyang city in Henan is only allowing the sale of completed homes on newly released land, becoming the country's first place to clearly curtail the traditional pre-sale housing model, the China Economic Net has reported. Li Dong, an associate researcher at Tsinghua University, said although the role of the pre-sale system will weaken nationwide, it will unlikely be totally removed in the near term. Chen Wenjing, director of policy research at the China Index Academy, warned that eliminating the pre-sale model in favour of a completed homes only system would challenge the capital situation of real estate companies.
• China's CPI is expected to rise slightly in H2, supported by measures to boost domestic demand and less drag from energy prices, Shanghai Securities News reported, citing Yu Ze, vice dean of the School of Economics at Renmin University. Global oil prices will likely stabilise and domestic coal prices may bottom out, Yu added. Although CPI fell 0.1% y/y in May, prices of industrial consumer goods excluding energy increased by 0.2 percentage points from April, as policies continued to take effect, according to Yu. Tourism demand also picked up, with May hotel prices at a decade high, the newspaper said.