China bank loans hit all-time monthly high, with 4.92 trillion yuan doled out in January
- Figure slightly exceeds 4.9 trillion yuan lent a year prior, while January is typically a busy month for bank loans in China
- As China pushes to invigorate economic growth, its aggregate financing reached 6.5 trillion yuan in January – a year-on-year increase of more than half a trillion
Chinese banks extended a record high of new loans during the first month of 2024 – an indication of Beijing’s efforts to stabilise growth in the world’s second-largest economy.
The yuan-denominated new loans reached a record high of 4.92 trillion yuan (US$684 billion) in January, according to data released by the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) on Friday.
The figure was higher than 4.9 trillion yuan extended in January 2023 and 1.17 trillion yuan in December. It also beat domestic expectations of 4.67 trillion yuan, as indicated in a poll by Chinese financial information provider Wind.
The aggregated financing, which includes bank credit, bonds and stock market funding, was 6.5 trillion yuan last month, 506.1 billion yuan higher than a year earlier.
However, the central bank tried to quell market expectations of a strong monetary loosening.
“We should pay less attention to high-frequency data such as monthly bank credit,” it said in the fourth-quarter monetary policy implementation report released a day earlier.
