NEW yuan loans in China rose to the highest in four months in October, while the bad loan ratio dropped at the end of the third quarter from nine months ago, official data showed yesterday.
Economists attributed the growing lending to easing monetary policies especially in favor of small and medium-sized enterprises but some warned of a possible rebound of bad loans as China goes on with economic reform and control on the property market.
Local-currency lending was 586.8 billion yuan (US$92.5 billion) in October, 17.5 billion yuan more than a year earlier and 116.8 billion yuan more than a month earlier, the People's Bank of China said in a statement yesterday.
The lending size was larger than the median estimate of 500 billion yuan in a Bloomberg News survey.
M2, the broadest measure of money supply, rose 12.9 percent, 0.1 percentage point slower than September.
"The significant rebound of lending is mainly due to China's 'selected' policy easing," the China International Capital Corp wrote in a report yesterday. "But we see a faster rise of short-term loans compared with long-term ones. An increase of short-term loans cannot ease liquidity pressure."
CICC said market liquidity has not improved significantly, adding that even though authorities will continue to apply easier monetary policy for SMEs, the general tone of monetary policies will not change.
E Yongjian, a researcher at the Bank of Communications, expected new yuan loans will reach 600-650 billion yuan in the next two months each to ensure economic growth, but he said the central bank is not likely to cut interest rates or turn down reserve requirements in the short term.
The non-performing loans ratio fell to 1.84 percent at the end of the third quarter, 0.6 percentage point lower than that at the end of last year, the China Banking Regulatory Commission said in a statement yesterday.
Outstanding NPLs totaled 1.06 trillion yuan at the end of the third quarter, down 184.7 billion yuan from nine months ago, the statement said.
"China's banks will continue to prevent risks and increase support for the small and medium-sized companies and the agriculture sector," CBRC Chairman Shang Fulin said in the statement.
Liu Mingkang, former CBRC chairman, who stepped down last month, told a forum in Beijing yesterday that China's capital market will be better supported in the future but the size of bad loans may rise as China continues to adjust its economic structure. "The faster we deal with these challenges, the less pain we will feel," Liu said.