Analysis-China's stimulus message leaves investors wanting though hanging onto hope

By Samuel Shen, Ankur Banerjee and Tom Westbrook

SHANGHAI/SINGAPORE (Reuters) - China's highly anticipated announcement of financial stimulus plans on Saturday was big on intent but low on the measurable details that investors need to ratify their recent return to the world's second-biggest stock market.

Saturday's news conference by Finance Minister Lan Foan reiterated Beijing's broad plans to revive the ailing economy, with promises made on significant increases to government debt and support for consumers and the property sector.

But for investors who were hoping to hear authorities spell out exactly how much the government will throw at the crisis, the briefing was disappointing.

“The strength of the announced fiscal stimulus plan is weaker than expected. There's no timetable, no amount, no details of how the money will be spent," said Huang Yan, investment manager at private fund company Shanghai QiuYang Capital Co in Shanghai.

Huang had hoped for more stimulus to boost consumption. Market analysts had been looking for a spending package between 2 trillion yuan to 10 trillion yuan ($283 billion to $1.4 trillion).

Reuters reported last month that China plans to issue special sovereign bonds worth about 2 trillion yuan this year as part of fresh fiscal stimulus. Bloomberg News reported China is considering the injection up to 1 trillion yuan of capital into its biggest state banks. Lan's press conference did not give any specifics.

In the three weeks since the People's Bank of China (PBOC) kicked off China's most aggressive stimulus measures since the pandemic, the CSI300 Index has broken records for daily moves and is up 16% overall. Stocks have grown wobbly in recent sessions, though, as initial enthusiasm gave way to concerns about whether the policy support would be big enough to revive growth.

"If that's what we have in terms of fiscal policies, the stock market bull run could run out of steam," Huang said, referring to comments at Saturday's press conference.

Heading into the briefing, some investors had braced for the finance minister to withhold actual spending details until China's rubber-stamp parliament meets later this month.

Equally, investors also worried that mere interest rate cuts, which the PBOC has already announced, and a reluctance by the central government to spend will imperil the odds the world's second-largest economy can hit its 5% growth target.

"Investors will need to be patient," said HSBC's chief Asia economist Fred Neumann, noting concrete numbers could come only by the end of this month when the standing committee of the National People's Congress reviews and votes on specific proposals.