China's bank credit expanded in May

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2009-06-12 20:28

BEIJING - China's bank credit expanded in May, with new yuan-denominated loans reaching 664.5 billion yuan (about US$97.29 billion) in May, the People's Bank of China (PBOC), the central bank, said here Friday.

The May figure brought new yuan-denominated loans in the first five months to 5.84 trillion yuan, far exceeding the full-year target of 5 trillion yuan.

Outstanding loans by financial institutions grew 30.6 percent year on year to 36.21 trillion yuan as of May, the PBOC said.

In the first quarter, China pumped 4.58 trillion yuan worth of new loans into the economy to stimulate growth. However, new bank credit shrank to 591.8 billion yuan in April as the peak season for bank lending ended.

Renminbi deposits grew 1.33 trillion yuan in May, taking outstanding deposits to 54.63 trillion yuan, up 26.27 percent from a year earlier.

M2 -- a broad measure of money supply, which covers cash in circulation and all deposits -- grew 25.74 percent year on year last month to 54.82 trillion yuan.

The narrow measure of money supply, M1 (cash in circulation plus corporate current deposits), was up 18.69 percent year on year to 18.2 trillion yuan, which was 1.21 percentage points higher than the April level.

Outstanding M0, or cash in circulation, hit 3.36 trillion yuan, up 11.24 percent from the same period last year.

"The bank credit is growing at a regular pace as investment expansion continued last month, and there is an increasing demand for loans," said Zhang Liqun, a researcher with the Development Research Center of the State Council, a government think-tank.

China's urban fixed-asset investment in the first five months surged 32.9 percent year on year to 5.352 trillion yuan, 2.4 percentage points higher than that of the first four months.

The increase in the new bank loans from April and May had shown that China had continued its loosened monetary policy based on the economic downward pressure, said Guo Tianyong, director with Finance Research Center of China's Central University of Finance and Economics.

"Such policy would continue in the future," he said.

Zhuang Jian, a senior economist with the Asian Development Bank, said despite the loan surge, China's economy is still contracting as the consumer prices index (CPI) and producer price index (PPI) continued to fall in May.

"It's too early to tell that there is an inflation risk as prices remain at a low level," he said.

China's CPI and PPI fell 1.4 percent and 7.2 percent in May year on year, respectively, the National Bureau of Statistics said Wednesday.