Chinas top banks to tweak mortgage rates to boost housing market [Video]

Six of China’s biggest banks said they would tweak interest rates on mortgages for existing home loans following a request to lower them from Beijing’s central bank, state media said Monday, as the country seeks to pull itself out of a housing slump.

The measures are the latest in a raft of pledges out of Beijing since last week aimed at kickstarting the world’s number-two economy.

The teetering property sector has long accounted for around a quarter of gross domestic product and experienced dazzling growth for two decades.

But a years-long housing slump has become a major impediment to growth as the country’s leadership eyes a target of around five percent this year — an objective analysts say is optimistic given the many headwinds the economy faces.

On Monday, state news agency Xinhua said that China’s six major national commercial banks — including the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, …