China's new yuan loans pick up in March

BEIJING - China's new yuan-denominated lending in March amounted to 1.37 trillion yuan ($210 billion), 188.3 billion yuan more than a year earlier, official data showed Friday.

In the first quarter (Q1), China's new yuan loans rose to 4.61 trillion yuan, up 930.1 billion yuan from a year earlier, the People's Bank of China (PBOC) said in a statement on its website.

Outstanding lending stood at 98.56 trillion yuan at the end of March, up 14.7 percent year-on-year.

The M2, a broad measure of money supply that covers cash in circulation and all deposits, rose 13.4 percent year-on-year to 144.62 trillion yuan at the end of March, according to the statement.

The narrow measure of money supply (M1), which covers cash in circulation plus demand deposits, rose 22.1 percent year-on-year to 41.16 trillion yuan.

The M0, the amount of money in circulation, stood at 6.47 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 4.4 percent. The central bank pumped 143.5 billion yuan of cash into the market in the first quarter.

Newly-added social financing, a measurement of funds that non-financial firms and households get from the financial system, in March stood at 2.34 trillion yuan, 1.51 trillion yuan more than February and 1.09 trillion yuan more than the same period last year.

In Q1, newly-added social finance came in 6.59 trillion yuan, 1.93 trillion yuan more than the same period last year.

At the end of March, yuan-denominated deposits stood at 141.12 trillion yuan, up 13 percent year-on-year. In the first quarter, yuan-denominated deposits gained 5.41 trillion yuan.

By the end of March, total outstanding loans stood at 103.79 trillion yuan, up 13.4 percent from the previous year, the PBOC said.

The growth of M1 is an indication of abundant market liquidity and that the real economy has been relatively stable, said Sheng Songcheng, director of the central bank's surveys and statistics department.

The new lending data has been widely watched as the market is speculating whether and when the central bank might unveil more easing policies to support the lukewarm economy.

"With growth once again underpinned by rising credit, concerns about medium-term stability increase," said Tom Orlik, chief Asia economist of Bloomberg.

The country's GDP grew 6.7 percent year-on-year to reach 15.9 trillion yuan in Q1 2016, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said Friday.

The growth further narrowed from the previous quarter's 6.8 percent, which was already the lowest quarterly rate since the global financial crisis.

The figure was, however, in line with market expectations and remained within the government's targeted range of between 6.5 and 7 percent for 2016.

With credit accelerating and growth stabilizing, the urgency to push ahead with monetary easing is reduced, while fiscal policy will do more of the work, according to Orlik.