Sunac China Holdings, Shimao Group, CIFI Group and Country Garden Holdings are among property developers whose projects have been included in "whitelists" by local governments in mainland China, a mechanism that qualifies their projects for financial support from banks.

While Beijing-based Sunac had 90 projects cleared for loan applications on Monday, Shanghai-based developers Shimao and CIFI had 16 and 18 projects, respectively, added to whitelists over the past week, according to local media reports.

Country Garden, once the mainland's largest private property developer by sales, said over the weekend that more than 30 of its projects in the country's eastern and southern provinces have been added to local governments' whitelists.

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"[Inclusion in the] whitelist will help to ease financial pressure on our part, promote housing delivery, allow us to better capitalise on our assets and enhance the projects' sustainability," Country Garden said in a statement. Shimao, CIFI and Sunac did not respond to requests for comment.

Beijing is stepping up efforts to relieve an industry-wide liquidity crunch and boost homebuyer sentiment. Authorities have been calling on provincial governments and banks to ramp up financing for China's cash-strapped developers, after new home prices in December recorded their steepest decline in close to nine years, according to official data.

The whitelists, launched by the housing ministry at the start of the year, ask provincial governments to recommend to banks local residential projects that are deemed financially sound and fit for further loan support.

"The whitelist screening criteria are based on projects instead of developers themselves," said Elaine Xu, director of Asia-Pacific financial institutions at Fitch Ratings.

The whitelists stipulate that a project applying for funds needs to be under construction. If the project has been put on hold for a while, the developer needs to demonstrate that it can resume construction and complete the project when funds are made available. Collateral that matches the amount of financing must also be in place, according to an internal memo seen by the Post.

The whitelists also require developers to come up with a schedule for completion of projects, while a main bank will be appointed to closely supervise the project funds.