The second loan market quotation rate of 2025, which is LPR, was released yesterday. On February 20, 2025, the loan market price rate was still 3.1% for one year and 3.6% for more than five years. This means that LPR has remained unchanged for four consecutive months since November 2024.
LPR is a benchmark for bank loan interest rates. It is closely related to our lives. Whether it is our home loan or corporate business loan, how much interest the bank wants is directly related to this LPR. It is like a "market guide price". What factors determine that LPR remains unchanged? What kind of signal is sent? Is it possible for mortgage loans to continue to be lowered this year?
Two days ago, the People's Bank of China carried out 7-day reverse repurchase operations of 538.9 billion yuan and 489.2 billion yuan respectively with fixed interest rates and quantity bidding methods, with operating interest rates of 1.50%, the same as before. Since the current 7-day reverse repurchase operation interest rate has become an important reference for LPR, the market has some expectations for the continued LPR in February. The LPR quotation in February continued to remain unchanged, and market participants believe that it is mainly affected by the combination of multiple factors. First of all, the current policy interest rates remain stable and the economic prosperity is rising.
Wang Qing, chief macro analyst of Oriental Jincheng: The policy interest rate and LPR quotations remained unchanged at the beginning of the year. The fundamental reason is that a package of incremental policies was introduced at the end of the third quarter of last year, the real estate market rebounded and the economic prosperity rose. GDP in the fourth quarter of 2024 rose to 5.4% year-on-year, 0.8 percentage points faster than the previous quarter. Since the beginning of 2025, the overall trend of residents' consumption has been stable, and financial data such as credit and social financing in January have started well.
Throughout 2024, the LPR for one year and more than five years decreased by 0.35 and 0.6 percentage points respectively. Driven by LPR, loan interest rates have steadily declined. The latest data shows that the weighted average interest rate of newly issued corporate loans (domestic and foreign currencies) in January is about 3.4%, about 40 basis points lower than the same period last year;
