China needs to do more in order to fix its real estate problems, the International Monetary Fund said on 10 February.

The property market contributes to about a quarter of China’s GDP and has been a drag on growth, especially since Beijing cracked down on developers’ high reliance on debt in 2020.

In the last few months the Chinese authorities have started to ease restrictions on financing for the property sector.

However, Thomas Helbling, deputy director in the IMF’s Asia Pacific Department, stated: “If you look at the measures, a lot of them address financing issues for the developers that are still in relatively good financial health, so that will help. But the problems of the property developers’ facing severe financial difficulties are not yet addressed. The issue of the large stock of unfinished housing more broadly is not yet addressed.”