Macao's lending to private sector grows

MACAO - Macao's domestic loans to local private sector in April increased 1.3 percent month-to-month to 172.5 billion patacas ($21.56 billion), according to the figures released on Friday by the Monetary Authority of Macao.

Some 46.3 billion patacas ($5.78 billion) of the domestic loans was pataca-denominated while 110.2 billion patacas ($13.77 billion) was denominated in HKD, representing 26.8 percent and 63.9 percent of the total respectively, the figures indicated.

Meanwhile, external loans rose by 0.6 percent month-to-month to 183.3 billion patacas, of which loans denominated in pataca and HKD accounted for 0.6 percent and 27.4 percent respectively.

As resident deposits grew faster than domestic loans to the private sector, the loan-to-deposit ratio for the resident sector at the end of April dropped by 0.5 percentage points month-to- month to 50.4 percent.

The ratio for both the resident and non-resident sectors stood at 75.7 percent in the period, up by 1.1 percentage points from the previous month.