(Yicai Global) Aug. 23 -- China's authorities are promoting new rental housing projects by blocking other channels for real estate developers' borrowing in order to help them deleverage and to tackle the soaring housing prices.

This year, some 12 companies have submitted applications to issue corporate bonds for building residences that will be rented, with a scale of CNY61.9 billion (USD9 billion), and so far the China Securities Regulatory Commission has approved six of them, state-backed The Paper reported yesterday. Four projects are in the process for review by stock exchanges.

Among the top five developers in terms of last year's sales revenue, four companies have engaged in long-term rental apartments, except for Evergrande Group.

On April 25, the CSRC and the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development jointly issued a statement to offer policy support for the development of residential leasing market and to establish a 'green channel' for applications. To enforce this movement, property firms have been prohibited to issue a series of other types of bonds since the end of May.

Regulators will also start conducting stricter reviews to prevent some companies from using the green channel to issue debt instruments to fund other types of housing projects.

Editor: Emmi Laine