BEIJING, Feb. 11 (Xinhua) -- China's new yuan-denominated lending in January stood at 1.39 trillion yuan (203.5 billion U.S. dollars), down 14.2 percent from a year earlier, the People's Bank of China (PBOC, the central bank) said Thursday.
In January last year, Chinese financial institutions issued a total of 1.62 trillion yuan in new loans. In total, China's yuan-denominated lending in 2009 hit a record 9.59 trillion yuan, almost double that of the previous year.
Analysts said January's new loans and the year-on-year drop fell within market expectations, as the central bank and China's banking regulator were acting to curb massive lending amid concerns of inflation.
Earlier, Goldman Sachs, UBS Securities and some Chinese financial institutions had forecast the January lending to be around 1.35 trillion yuan.
Fan Jianping, chief economist with the State Information Center, maintained that the 1.39 trillion yuan of new loans was acceptable since lending in January and the first quarter have traditionally been large.
He told Xinhua that the January figure indicated the government had effectively controlled credit expansion by employing quantity-based monetary tools.
On Jan. 12, in an expected move, the PBOC demanded Chinese financial institutions to raise the deposit reserve requirement ratio by 0.5 percentage points from Jan. 18.
On Jan. 27, Liu Mingkang, chairman of the China Banking Regulatory Commission, asked lenders to keep credit growth at reasonable pace in 2010.
Liu had also said the Chinese government aimed to restrict credit supply to 7.5 trillion yuan for the entire 2010.
According to PBOC, as of the end of January, the broad measure of money supply M2, which covers cash in circulation and all deposits, rose 25.98 percent from a year earlier to 62.51 trillion yuan.
The growth rate was 1.7 percentage points lower than that at the end of 2009, said the central bank.
As of the end of January, the narrow measure of money supply, M1 (cash in circulation plus current corporate deposits), jumped 38.96 percent to 22.96 trillion yuan. The growth rate was 6.61 percentage points higher than that at the end of 2009.
The outstanding amount of M0, or cash in circulation, amounted to 4.08 trillion yuan, down slightly 0.79 percent from the same period last year.
In January, net amount of cash put into circulation stood at 251.2 billion yuan, 63.4 percent less than that in January 2009, according to the PBOC statement.
At the end of January, outstanding loans by all financial institutions reached 44.02 trillion yuan, up 31.02 percent year-on-year, said the PBOC.
Total deposits at all financial institutions stood at 62.72 trillion yuan, an increase of 26.77 percent from a year earlier.
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