China's loan prime rate (LPR), a market-based benchmark lending rate, remained unchanged for the tenth straight month in March, the People's Bank of China (PBOC) announced on Friday.
The one-year LPR, which guides pricing for corporate and short-term loans, held at 3.0 percent, while the over-five-year rate, a key reference for mortgage lending, stayed at 3.5 percent, according to the Chinese central bank.
Market analysts said the decision aligned with expectations, driven by two key factors. First, the LPR's pricing anchor, the seven-day reverse repo rate, has remained stable recently. Second, commercial banks' net interest margins, along with real-economy financing costs, are already at low levels, leaving little incentive for lenders to voluntarily trim their LPR quotes.
Earlier this year, PBOC Deputy Governor Zou Lan said at a State Council press briefing that there is still room for reserve requirement ratio cuts and interest rate reductions in 2026.
On Thursday, the central bank reaffirmed its commitment to implementing a "moderately loose" monetary policy throughout the year to maintain adequate liquidity and keep overall social financing costs low.
Since the beginning of the year, China's economic performance has exceeded market expectations, reducing the immediate necessity for counter-cyclical monetary easing. This provides room to maintain a moderately loose policy stance later this year, said Wang Yifeng, deputy director of Everbright Securities Research Institute.
China's loan prime rates remain unchanged for 10th consecutive month
A massive shale gas field with over 200 billion cubic meters of ultra-deep reserves has been confirmed in southwest China's Sichuan Basin, taking the country's exploration push into uncharted territory more than 4,500 meters underground.
China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation (Sinopec) announced on Wednesday that its Ziyang Dongfeng shale gas field has secured official certification from the Ministry of Natural Resources. The field holds proven geological reserves of 235.687 billion cubic meters, marking the birth of China's first ultra-deep shale gas field of this size.
The breakthrough began in 2024, when the Ziyang 2 well tested at a daily industrial gas flow of 1.257 million cubic meters, marking a major milestone in the exploration of Cambrian Qiongzhusi Formation, the earth's oldest commercial shale layer which formed 540 million years ago.
Since then, technical teams have ramped up exploration and appraisal efforts, achieving increasingly higher test outputs and identifying a large, contiguous gas field buried between 4,500 and 5,200 meters deep.
"We conducted nearly one kilometer of systematic coring and more than 22,000 experimental analyses, allowing us to characterize the geology at the micrometer level. We integrated artificial intelligence into our geophysical technologies to clarify key features such as stratigraphy, sedimentation, and reservoir properties," said Zhang Zhuang, manager of the Oil and Gas Exploration Management Department at Sinopec's Southwest Oil and Gas Company.
"We also mastered ultra-deep shale gas drilling and fracturing technologies, forming a fully independent technological system for Cambrian ultra-deep shale gas exploration and development," said Zhang.
The Cambrian Qiongzhusi Formation, with its thick, hard-to-drill rock layers, poses enormous engineering challenges. Despite harsh downhole conditions of high temperature and high pressure, Chinese engineers achieved key technological breakthroughs and figured out how shale gas accumulates within the formation. This achievement opened a new chapter for shale gas exploration in China.
China confirms first large-scale ultra-deep shale gas field in Sichuan
