Over half of bankers consider monetary policy 'moderate' in Q1

Chinese bankers saw rising sentiment on the country's monetary policy for the January-March quarter, according to results published by the People's Bank of China (PBOC) on Tuesday.

The monetary policy sentiment index stood at 72.7 percent in the first three months this year, increasing 17.6 percent from the previous quarter, and the figure registered its highest level since 2013, with 50.8 percent of the bankers surveyed considering monetary policy as moderate, down 29.4 percentage points from the previous quarter.

Results showed 47.3 percent of the respondents considered monetary policy to be loose in the first quarter.

Affected by the novel coronavirus outbreak, the banking industry's macroeconomic heat index stayed at 6.5 percent from January to March, presenting a quarter-on-quarter drop of 24.2 percentage points.

About 87.2 percent of bankers considered the current macro economy as "cold", up 47.2 percentage points from last quarter, while 12.6 percent of bankers thought the economy going on "normally".

However, as the epidemic gradually comes under controlled and work resumes, the index is expected to reach 32.9 percent in the next quarter, rising 26.4 percentage points, said the central bank.

According to the survey, the overall loan demand index of the banking sector presented 66 percent in Q1, up 0.6 percentage points from the previous quarter. The loan demand in the manufacturing sector and for infrastructure construction increased 6.4 and 1.7 percentage points quarter-on-quarter, respectively.

The People's Bank of China also published the survey on urban depositors,

households' income sentiment index featured 41.6 percent, down 11 percentage points compared to a quarter earlier. In the survey, 10 percent of residents thought their income had increased, while over 60 percent believed their salary was unchanged.

In the first quarter, over half of households preferred to "save more", while only 22 percent preferred to "spend more" and those who tended to "invest more" accounted for 25 percent.

In terms of the next quarter, the expectation index for goods price reached 63.2 percent, falling 1.2 percentage points from the previous quarter. About 45 percent of households believed the price of goods would remain stable, and 48 percent thought the housing prices would stand relatively unchanged for the following quarter.

In another survey of Chinese entrepreneurs, the entrepreneurs' macroeconomic heat index stood at 12.4 percent, falling 19.4 percentage points in comparison with the previous quarter, with 75.5 percent of entrepreneurs considering the economy was relatively "cold".

The survey by the Chinese central bank began in 2004, and has comprehensively collected the statistics across roughly 3,200 banking institutions.