1st LD-Writethru: China's new yuan loans more than double in August

China's new yuan loans surged in August as mortgage loans soared amid a property market frenzy, official data showed on Wednesday.

New yuan-denominated lending more than doubled from a month ago to 948.7 billion yuan (about 145.95 billion U.S. dollars), the People's Bank of China said in a statement on its website.

Home loans increased more than 670 billion yuan, the central bank said, which explains most of the monthly rise in new loans. The central bank also attributed the surging new loans to the fact that loans to non-financial companies and institutions increased 120.9 billion yuan, in sharp contrast with a 2.6-billion-yuan decrease in July.

The property market has seen prices and sales increase substantially over the past months, boosted by pro-growth policies including interest rate cuts and lower deposit requirements.

M2, a broad measure of money supply that covers cash in circulation and all deposits, rose 11.4 percent year on year to 151.1 trillion yuan by the end of August.

The narrow measure of money supply (M1), which covers cash in circulation plus demand deposits, rose 25.3 percent year on year to 45.45 trillion yuan.

The central bank data also showed newly added social financing, a gauge of funds that firms and households get from the financial system, increased by more than 360 billion yuan from the same period a year ago to 1.47 trillion yuan. Endi