Singapore's bank lending records 17th consecutive month of year-on-year growth

SINGAPORE, March 29 (Xinhua) -- Singapore's total loans and advances including bills financing of Domestic Banking Units (DBU) grew 3.75 percent as against February 2017, marking the 17th straight month of year-on-year growth, but the growth rate was lower than that of 5.6 percent for last December and 5.43 percent for this January.

Meanwhile, the figure inched up 0.05 percent month on month in February, to a predicted 650.93 billion Singapore dollars. This is a rebound from the 0.27 percent and 0.2 percent month-on-month declines for last December and this January respectively.

In February, Singaporean DBU's loans to businesses grew 2.87 percent year on year and 0.03 percent month on month, to 387.4 billion dollars. In a breakdown, the loans to building and construction reached 121.05 billion dollars, dropping 2.73 percent year on year and accounting for about 31.25 percent of the total business loans.

DBU's consumer loans in February reached 263.53 billion dollars in the second month of 2018, up 5.05 percent year on year and 0.07 percent month on month. (1 U.S. dollar equals to 1.31 Singapore dollars) Enditem