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Jan-Feb loans hit 28% of yearly target

By Qiang Xiaoji (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2010-03-12 15:06

The new yuan-denominated loans extended by China's banks in the first two months of 2010 hit 2.09 trillion yuan ($306.17 billion), accounting for 28 percent of the nation's lending target of 7.5 trillion yuan set for this year.

The central bank will continue to ask lenders to tighten lending in the following months, National Business Daily reported Friday, citing the latest research released by investment advisor CEBM Group.

The market has worried about possible tightening measures since early this year, despite authorities' repeated assurance that "a moderately loose monetary policy" will stay.

According to Thursday's statistics released by the People's Bank of China, new yuan loans in February decreased by half over January to 700 billion yuan. M2, the broadest measure of money supply, rose 25.52 percent in February year-on-year to 63.6 trillion yuan, but the rate was 0.56 percentage point lower than January's level.

Ma Jing, a CPPCC National Committee member, told the newspaper that it was too dangerous to put the sudden brakes on new bank lending, as a new round of powerful economic growth has not come yet, even though the economy is stabilizing and recovering.

"The current increase in exports has mainly resulted from exporters' absorbing inventory before the financial crisis (amid rising overseas demand)," said Ma, head of the Guangzhou branch of People's Bank of China. "A moderately loose monetary policy was still needed to sustain growth." Earlier, Liu Mingkang, chairman of the China Banking Regulatory Commission, had denied market rumors that the banking regulator was banning commercial banks from lending. The credit growth cap was set at 7.5 trillion yuan for 2010, according to him.

Su Ning, deputy governor of the central bank, also said raising the deposit reserve ratio does not necessarily mean a tightening of policy. He said he hoped the 7.5 trillion-yuan new credit would accelerate the construction of existent projects and a control should be put on new projects.