China cut borrowing costs for the first time since 2008 and loosened controls on banks’ lending and deposit rates, stepping up efforts to combat a deepening slowdown as Europe’s debt crisis threatens global growth.
The one-year lending rate declines by a quarter percentage point today to 6.31 percent, the People’s Bank of China said in a statement yesterday. The one-year deposit rate drops the same amount, to 3.25 percent. The extra leeway banks will get to determine rates at variance from the official setting was called a “milestone” by UBS AG.
