China business, bankers confidence dips in Q4 - c.bank survey

BEIJING (Reuters) - Business confidence among China's entrepreneurs and bankers dipped in the fourth quarter of 2015 from the third, according to surveys by the People's Bank of China published on Thursday.

The entrepreneurs' confidence index fell to 46 percent in the fourth quarter, 4.5 percentage points lower than the third quarter, a central bank survey showed.

The export orders index was at 43.7 percent in the fourth quarter, down 2.6 percentage points from the previous quarter, the survey showed.

A separate central bank survey showed that bankers' confidence index slipped to 37.9 percent in the fourth quarter, down 2.7 percentage points from the third.

The survey showed 38.8 percent of bankers believed monetary policy would be relatively loose in the first quarter of 2016.

The same survey showed more bankers believed the economy had cooled in the fourth quarter compared with the third quarter.

The central bank has cut interest rates six times since November 2014 and reduced the amount of cash that banks must set aside as reserves.

A separate survey by the central bank showed that 52 percent of residents believed housing prices were "unacceptably high" in the fourth quarter, up 2.4 percentage points from the third.

The proportion of residents prepared to buy property in the next three months rose to 14.7 percent in the fourth quarter, 0.9 percentage points higher than the previous quarter, it showed.

(Reporting by Beijing Monitoring Desk and Kevin Yao; Editing by Jacqueline Wong)