Africa Business News

China’s central bank has cut a key interest rate amid concerns about the post-pandemic recovery of the world’s second-largest economy. The People’s Bank of China cut the one-year loan prime rate, a benchmark for corporate loans, from 3.55 per cent to 3.45 per cent. The central bank held the five-year LPR, which is used to price mortgages, steady at 4.2 per cent. China’s post-COVID recovery has been hampered by weakening demand for Chinese goods due to the uncertain global economic outlook and domestic challenges ranging from a slumping property market to a record-low birth rate. China last week also announced it would no longer publish detailed youth unemployment figures after the jobless rate hit 21.3 per cent in June.