CSRC confirms efforts to reduce stamp duty

The China Securities Regulatory Commission has confirmed its coordinating efforts with relevant departments to reduce the stamp duty, but the move is far from being a bailout, says an article in International Finance News. Excerpts:

First of all, the CSRC itself is not in charge of collecting the stamp duty, while the duty's rate of 0.1 percent is already very low. Any scale of reduction will not leave enough room for confidence.

The CRSC should no longer hold the duty as a measure for market control and adjustment. It's shortsighted to pay the price of long-term fluctuations for short-term effect.

The deep-rooted cause of the market recession is the slowing down of China's economic growth. As companies face more difficulties in a period of economic structural transformation, leading economic indexes started to decline in the second quarter.

Under such circumstances, the CSRC should immediately introduce a moratorium on the issuance of new shares, which has long been urged by investors. But regretfully, the commission turned a deaf ear to those appeals while insisting on its single-minded push to expand the market to be the world's biggest in the following years. One cannot help to ask if marketization is the reason why the CSRC is deaf to market voices.