China's State Council announced a raft of measures to support the economy that has showed new signs of slowdown, the state broadcaster reported Wednesday.

The State Council, the nation's cabinet, approved a 200 billion yuan ($29 billion) new bond quota for the country's power-generation companies and additional CNY10 billion agricultural subsidy.

China's power plants and agricultural sector have been battered by a drought in a large swath of the nation that reined in hydropower and created an energy shortage in southwestern China's Sichuan Province and the city of Chongqing.

The State Council said the central government planned to spend CNY10 billion in fighting the drought and aiding the nation's rice harvest.

The cabinet said it would also increase more than CNY300 billion in quota for the nation's state banks in their financial instruments to stabilize growth and asked local governments to better use the CNY500 billion in unused quota of the special-purpose bonds that accumulated from previous years.

It also allowed local governments to introduce localized credit policy for real home demand. The cabinet said it would introduce measures to support private business and platform economy, though it didn't provide more details.

The State Council said it would dispatch supervising teams to ensure local governments implement existing growth-supporting measures and improve government efficiency.

Chinese leaders implicitly dropped the annual growth target of 5.5% in a meeting late last month, after the world's second largest economy reported a 2.5% expansion in the first half of the year, effectively making the target out of reach.

Wednesday's measures also followed weaker-than-expected data in July with consumption, investment and industrial production decelerating again after a two-month recovery from an earlier massive Covid-19 lockdown.


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Corrections & Amplifications

This article was corrected on August 25, 2022 because the original incorrectly said the cabinet asked local governments to better use the CNY500 billion proceeds from issuing the special-purpose bonds earlier. The cabinet asked local governments to better use the CNY500 billion in unused quota of the special-purpose bonds that accumulated from previous years.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

08-24-22 0811ET