1st LD-Writethru: China's new yuan loans rise lower than expected

BEIJING, Jan. 12 (Xinhua) -- China's new yuan-denominated lending in December hit 584.4 billion yuan (about 90 billion U.S. dollars), 460 billion yuan less than the same period one year ago, central bank data showed Friday.

The rise in December was much lower than the expected 1 trillion yuan, and the lowest since April 2016.

The M2, a broad measure of money supply that covers cash in circulation and all deposits, reached 167.68 trillion yuan at the end of December, up 8.2 percent from a year earlier or 3.1 percentage points down from a year ago, the People's Bank of China said in an online statement.

The narrower measure of money supply (M1), which covers cash in circulation plus demand deposits, rose 11.8 percent year on year to 54.38trillion yuan at the end of December. The growth rate was 9.6 percentage points down from one year ago.

M0, the amount of cash in circulation, was up 3.4 percent year on year to 7.1 trillion yuan.

For the whole year, the net cash injection totaled 234 billion yuan.

In 2017, new yuan-denominated lending totaled 13.53 trillion yuan, which was 878 billion yuan more than the previous year.

Businesses borrowed more. Loans to non-financial enterprises and organizations stood at 6.71 trillion yuan in 2017, up from 6.1 trillion yuan in 2016.

Last year, new yuan deposits stood at 13.51 trillion yuan, 1.36 trillion yuan less than the previous year.

The foreign exchange reserves hit 3.14 trillion U.S. dollars in December.

Total social financing (TSF), a broad measure of credit and liquidity in the economy, dropped to 1.14 trillion yuan in December, nearly 500 billion yuan less than the same period in the previous year.

Despite the drop, the TSF for the whole of 2017 increased 1.6 trillion yuan year on year to 19.4 trillion yuan. Enditem