Banks to expedite making loans in last quarter

Updated: 2011-11-02 19:04

(Xinhua)

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BEIJING - China's new loans will expand in the last quarter, bringing the year's total to around 7.5 trillion yuan, as the government has signaled it will fine tune macroeconomic policies, according to a banking insider.

The banking analyst, who declined to be named, said Tuesday that China's four largest state-owned banks made only 80 billion yuan ($12.64 billion) of new yuan-denominated loans in the first 20 days last month, while lending more than 60 billion yuan from October 21 to October 27.

"This signals that the country's banks are speeding up the pace of their lending, and the total yuan-denominated loans this year might hit 7.5 trillion yuan, the ceiling set by the central bank earlier this year," the analyst said.

The four largest banks include the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, China Construction Bank, Bank of China and the Agricultural Bank of China.

In September, China's new yuan loans hit a 20-month low of 470 billion yuan, down 131.1 billion yuan from a year ago and down 78.5 billion yuan from August, according to the People's Bank of China, the central bank.

The central bank has raised interest rates three times this year and hiked the reserve requirement ratio for commercial banks six times to mop up excessive liquidity to ease inflation.

However, an official statement released Saturday after a State Council executive meeting chaired by Premier Wen Jiabao said the government is going to fine tune its macro economic policies at appropriate time.

"The drop of China's prices in September created ample room for the adjustment of macro policies, and subsequently bank lending in the last quarter will most likely grow steadily," the insider said.

China's consumer price index, a main gauge of inflation, rose 6.1 percent year-on-year in September, easing slightly from 6.2 percent in August, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.