(ATF) China’s new yuan-denominated loans continued to climb in April as the country stepped up credit support to inject liquidity into the real economy, official data showed Monday.
New yuan loans hit 1.7 trillion yuan ($240billion) in April, a year-on-year rise of 681.8bn yuan, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC), said.
Loans in the household sector and the corporate sector increased by 666.9bn yuan and 956.3bn yuan, respectively, with medium- and long-term loans accounting for the majority.
M2, a broad measure of money supply that covers cash in circulation and all deposits, rose 11.1% to 209.35tn yuan at the end of April, the central bank data showed.
Growth was 1 percentage point higher than that at the end of March and 2.6 percentage points higher from a year ago.
The narrow measure of the money supply (M1), which covers cash in circulation plus demand deposits, stood at 57tn yuan by the end of April, up 5.5% from a year ago.
M0, the amount of cash in circulation, rose 10.2% to 8.15tn yuan by the end of April.
China has been adding liquidity into a coronavirus-hit market via a wide range of monetary tools, resorting to targeted credit support rather than a massive stimulus to shore up the economy.
Measures such as targeted cuts in reserve requirement ratios for small banks were taken to ease the liquidity strain on small- and medium-sized enterprises.
Monday’s data showed that newly added social financing, a measurement of funds that individuals and non-financial firms receive from the financial system, came in at 3.09tn yuan, up 1.42 trillion yuan from a year ago.
By the end of April, outstanding social financing increased 12% to 265.22tn yuan, with outstanding loans to the real economy jumping 13.1% to 160.45tn yuan, accounting for 60.5% of the total.
In addition to loans, companies have been using various other channels to raise funds. Firms’ net financing via bonds totaled 901.5bn yuan last month, 506.6bn yuan more than a year earlier, the data showed.
