China's new yuan loans at around 1.5t yuan in May: analysts

BEIJING - China's new yuan loans and social financing may stay elevated in May as the country stepped up credit support to inject liquidity into the real economy, analysts predicted.

As banks accelerated credit supplies, new yuan loans may reach around 1.5 trillion yuan ($211.6 billion) for last month, the China Securities Journal reported, citing a forecast by Hua Changchun, chief economist with Guotai Junan Securities.

Wang Yifeng, an analyst with Everbright Securities, put the figure at between 1.2 trillion yuan and 1.6 trillion yuan as short-term consumption credit gradually recovered and housing loans normalized.

Overall liquidity conditions remained relatively ample last month due to targeted cuts in bank reserve requirement ratios, and the M2, a broad measure of money supply that covers cash in circulation and all deposits, may rise 11 percent during the period, according to Hua.

To offset downward pressure on the economy, the relatively high growth of M2 and social financing may last throughout 2020, Hua added.

Lu Zhengwei, chief economist at the Industrial Bank, estimated 3.56 trillion yuan in newly-added social financing last month, a year-on-year growth of 12.7 percent.

Since the novel coronavirus outbreak, China has increased policy support on the monetary and fiscal fronts to help businesses, especially small ones, to tide over difficulties.

China will pursue a prudent monetary policy in a more flexible and appropriate way, according to this year's government work report.

The country will use a variety of tools including reserve requirement ratio cuts, interest rate reductions and re-lending to enable M2 money supply and aggregate financing to grow at notably higher rates than last year, said the report.