Housing provident fund authority suspends service, rebuffs rumors

The country's housing provident fund authority, a unit under the Government Offices Administration of the State Council, claimed that its recent suspension of services is because it is upgrading its system, not because of a capital crunch, the Beijing Times reported Wednesday.

The housing fund authority released a notice on June 20 saying that all services regarding housing provident funds would be halted between Friday and the coming Thursday.

Given recent reports of tight liquidity among banks, the unit's service suspension aroused concerns that it was also suffering from insufficient capital.

But the housing provident fund authority claimed that the service suspension is only because it needs to upgrade the system to ensure better services. The unit also claimed that it has enough capital at present, according to the report.

On Sunday, the online system and the ATM network of Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, the country's largest bank by market value, were also temporarily unavailable. But the bank said the service halt was also due to a system upgrade.