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October 17, 2014

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Banks in China lift new yuan loans

BANKS in China lent more in September as part of the central bank’s measures to boost the economy, while the country’s foreign exchange reserves fell by the most on record.

New yuan loans in September totaled 857.2 billion yuan (US$140 billion), 70.2 billion yuan more than the same month of last year, the People’s Bank of China said in a statement yesterday. The figure also exceeded a Reuters poll by about 120 billion yuan.

Total social financing, the broadest measure of credit supply including loans, bank acceptance bills, corporate bonds and equity financing, totaled 1.05 trillion yuan in September, up 94.5 billion yuan from August but 359.8 billion yuan below September last year.

“The headline data generally improved. It is a positive signal that the financial sector is increasing support to the economy,” said Liu Dongliang, a senior analyst with China Merchants Bank.

“But total social financing revealed a decline in off-balance financing activities mainly due to the regulator’s tight oversight and banks’ risk aversion. It could be more difficult for companies to get funding because of the decline.”

M2, the broad measure of money supply, rose 12.9 percent from last year, up 0.1 percentage point from August.

The more positive financing data echoed with the PBOC lowering interest rates by cutting 14-day repo bonds three times in the past four months to encourage fundraising, trimming reserve requirements for certain banks, injecting funds into the five largest state-owned banks, and easing mortgage curbs.

But September’s economic data showed the Purchasing Managers’ Index, a measure of manufacturing activities, flat at 51.1 from August, while consumer inflation slipped to its lowest in nearly five years.

Concerns over the economy rose after yesterday’s data showed foreign exchange reserves dropped to US$3.89 trillion at the end of September from US$3.99 trillion at the end of June, the largest quarterly decline on record.




 

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