- Tim Condon, Head of Financial Markets Research of ING
Chinese banks issued new yuan loans of 1.18 trillion yuan or $189.97 billion in March, up from 1.02 trillion yuan month before, beating expectations of 1.03 trillion yuan, the People's Bank of China reported. However, the broad money supply (M2) growth slowed down last month to 11.6% to 127 trillion yuan, disappointing expectations of 12.3%, versus the previous month 12.5%. The narrow measure of money supply (M1) rose 2.9% to 33.7 trillion yuan. Furthermore, outstanding loans gained 14% in March, while analysts had forecasted growth to be 14.5%, compared to 14.3% in February. The central bank stated that the overall aggregate financing stood at 1.18 trillion yuan in March, down from 1.35 trillion yuan month before. Moreover, credit structure expanded in March, including bigger amount of loans for small and medium enterprises, services, property, infrastructure and industry.
Meanwhile, in the first quarter of 2015 the total new bank yuan loans stood at 3.61 trillion yuan, compared to 3 trillion yuan year ago. The total social financing aggregate after first three months was 4.61 trillion yuan, versus 5.6 trillion yuan in the first three months of 2014. The total China's foreign exchange reserves rose to $3.73 trillion at the end of the first quarter, down from $3.84 trillion at the end of 2014.
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