Loans issued from China's housing provident fund nears 1.5t yuan in 2023

BEIJING -- China issued over 2.86 million individual mortgage loans worth nearly 1.5 trillion yuan (about $211.01 billion) under its housing provident fund programme in 2023, benefitting a broader spectrum of people, official data showed Friday.

Over 76.2 million people withdrew a total of about 2.66 trillion yuan from the fund last year, according to a report jointly released by the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development and the People's Bank of China.

Contributions to the fund totaled around 3.47 trillion yuan, the report revealed. The number of entities and persons contributing to the fund increased by 9.29 percent and 2.8 percent over the previous year, respectively.

Last year, seven more Chinese cities were added to the list of pilot cities where flexibly employed people are allowed to participate in the housing provident fund system. This helped such group of people to work and live stably, according to the report.

Meanwhile, the fund's coverage among flexibly employed individuals expanded steadily, with the number of such group of people contributing to the fund increasing by 124.1 percent year-on-year by the end of 2023 across a total of 13 pilot cities.

China has also beefed up efforts to support new citizens and young people in big cities who wish to withdraw the fund to pay rent. More than 18.46 million people withdrew about 203.13 billion yuan to pay rent in 2023, representing growth of 20.04 percent and 33.52 percent over the previous year, respectively.