Beijing preparing stimulus package

China is preparing a raft of measures – likely to include interest rate cuts and an increase in infrastructure spending – in order to spur economic growth, the South China Morning Post reported. "Concrete fiscal, credit and trade measures will be issued soon," a spokesman from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) Li Xiaochao was quoted as saying. The NBS on Monday announced that China’s economy had grown by 9% in the third quarter, its slowest rate in five years. The paper cited economists at major foreign banks who predicted that China’s economic stimulus package would likely include a slower appreciation of the yuan against the dollar; price rises for electricity, natural gas and petrol; increasing infrastructure spending by US$43.9 billion; reducing the value-added tax on housing transactions; three or four rate cuts of more than 27 basis points each from the benchmark one-year lending and deposit rates by the end of 2009, as well as one or two reserve ratio cuts of 50 basis points each.