According to statistics released today by the Monetary Authority of Macao, broad money supply resumed its growth in March. Total deposits increased while external loans grew at a fast pace. The overall loan-to-deposit ratio therefore rose slightly from a month ago.
Money supply
Currency in circulation decreased 4.7% whereas demand deposits increased 3.2%. M1 thus rose 1.8% compared with the previous month. Meanwhile, quasi-monetary liabilities rose 2.9%. The sum of these two items, i.e. M2, increased 2.7% to MOP215.9 billion. On an annual basis, M1 and M2 rose 17.4% and 9.8% respectively. The share of Pataca (MOP) in M2 stood at 28.2%, down 1.1 percentage points over a month ago or 0.1 percentage point from a year earlier. Concurrently, the share of Hong Kong Dollar (HKD) in M2 was 54.6%, up 1.7 percentage points month-to-month or 1.1 percentage points year-on-year.
Deposits
Resident deposits rose 2.9% from the previous month to MOP210.8 billion. Of which, MOP deposits and other foreign currency deposits declined at respective rates of 0.7% and 1.0% while HKD deposits rose 6.1%. Concurrently, non-resident deposits stayed flat at MOP73.0 billion and public sector deposits with the banking sector rose 3.3% to MOP16.0 billion. As a result, total deposits with the banking sector grew 2.2% from the previous month to MOP299.7 billion. The shares of MOP and HKD in total deposits were 22.6% and 46.3% respectively.
Loans
Domestic loans to the private sector grew slightly by 0.4% in March to MOP105.1 billion. Among which, MOP30.6 billion was MOP-denominated and MOP67.8 billion was denominated in HKD, representing 29.2% and 64.5% of the total respectively. Loans to “transport, warehouse and communications” and “personal housing loans” increased quarter-to-quarter at respective rates of 32.5% and 9.8% whereas those to “non-monetary financial institutions” and “manufacturing industries” dropped 20.2% and 14.7%. Meanwhile, external loans grew 4.9% to MOP106.2 billion; of which, loans denominated in MOP and HKD accounted for 0.8% (MOP0.9 billion) and 41.2% (MOP43.8 billion) of the total respectively.
Loan-to-deposit ratios
As resident deposits and public sector deposits with the banking sector grew faster than domestic loans to
the private sector, the loan-to-deposit ratio for the resident sector at end-March 2010 dropped by 1.2 percentage points month-to-month to 46.3%. The ratio for both the resident and non-resident sectors stood at 70.5%, up slightly by 0.3 percentage points from the previous month.
