China sets deadline for cities to set up financing coordination mechanism for property projects

BEIJING (Reuters) - China's housing and financial regulators on Thursday urged prefecture-level and above cities to establish a financing coordination mechanism before March 15 in a bid to support the country's struggling property sector.

Financial institutions need to prevent loans from being misappropriated and safeguard the safety of credit funds, the Chinese housing ministry's newspaper China Real Estate Business reported, citing a meeting held on Thursday.

Launched last month, "Project Whitelist", as it is known, allows city governments to recommend residential projects to banks as being suitable for financial support, and to coordinate with financial institutions to meet project needs.

As of February 28, 276 cities in 31 provinces have set up such mechanisms, with a total of about 6,000 real estate projects proposed, and commercial banks have approved loans of more than 200 billion yuan ($27.81 billion) for eligible projects, the newspaper said.

($1 = 7.1905 Chinese yuan renminbi)

(Reporting by Ella Cao, Ethan Wang and Ryan Woo. Editing by Jane Merriman)