New yuan loans hit record high 3.34 trillion yuan in December

China's new yuan loans in January hit the historical record of 3.34 trillion yuan ($476.3 billion), double the amount in December (1.14 trillion yuan), to curb the spread of novel coronavirus and promote companies to resume production, the central bank reported on Thursday.

The growth of aggregate financing, a broader calculation of the funding provided to the real economy, including local government bonds, surged to 5.07 trillion yuan last month, compared with 2.1 trillion yuan in December, which also reached an unprecedented high, the People's Bank of China, the central bank, showed.

The sharp rise of credit was to support companies resuming production and to mitigate the negative impact of the virus outbreak, economists said.

A few hours before the data disclosure, the PBOC announced a cut to the benchmark lending rate, the one-year loan prime rate, by 0.1 percentage point to 4.05 percent. The rate cut was the largest since the loan prime rate was introduced in August 2019.