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BEIJING, Dec. 21 - China is raising the interest rates for the sixth time this year in a fresh move to cool a red-hot economy expected to expand 11.5 percent for the full year and to battle inflation that has climbed to an 11-year high.
China would raise the one-year deposit interest rate by 27 basis points to 4.14 percent and the lending rate by 18 basis points to 7.47 percent as of Friday, the central bank said in a statement posted on its website. The move, which aimed to "prevent the economy from overheating and the structural1 price rises from evolving into evident inflation", followed the "tight" monetary2 policy for 2008 made by the Central Economic Work Conference held earlier this month. The key economic meeting decided3 to shift China's monetary policy from a "prudent4" stance, which the country had followed for the last 10 years, to "tightening5". Different from the five previous such moves, the central bank lowered the interest rate for sight deposits by nine basis points, to encourage people to put more money in the bank for a fixed6 period, rather than having it readily available for stock or property investment. "Lower rates for sight deposits and unequal rises in deposit and lending rates will narrow the rate gap between credits and deposits and help China check excessive credit growth," said Guo Tianyong, a professor at the Central University of Finance and Economics. With the country still facing inflationary pressure, the central bank lifted the rates to relieve the public's expectations for inflation, a spokesman with the central bank said. Rising food prices, especially pork, the country's meat staple7, pushed China's inflation rate to a new 11-year high of 6.9 percent in November. The inflation rate for the first 11 months was 4.6 percent, compared with the government's target of three percent. Analysts8 said people's expectations for further price rises also played a role in rising inflation by breaking the balance between supply and demand. "If the move fails to ease inflationary pressure in a certain period of time, the central bank may announce more hikes in interest rates and bank reserve requirement," said Tang Min, the chief economist9 with the Asian Development Bank mission in China. Also on Thursday, the U.S. Treasury10 Department, despite pressure from Congress, declined to designate China as a currency manipulator whose policies hurt its trading partners. Tang Yaling, an expert with the Bank of China, said that "the interest rate hike will provide more space for the yuan's appreciation11, and both the hike and the news from the U.S. will help ease the upward pressure on the Chinese currency." "The central bank chose a good opportunity to raise the interest rates because the U.S. dollar was on the rise these days," she added. Earlier this month, China told its commercial banks to hold more money in reserve for the 10th time this year. It was also in an effort to cool the booming economy and slow rising inflation. The reserve requirement ratio was raised by one percentage point, the largest increase this year.
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