According to statistics released today by the Monetary Authority of Macao, broad money supply maintained its uptrend in October. As loans decreased and deposits increased, the overall loan-to-deposit ratio of the banking sector continued to slide. Money supply Currency in circulation dropped 1.4% while demand deposits rose 8.9%. M1 thus increased 7.1% from one month earlier. Concurrently, quasi-monetary liabilities grew 2.9%. The sum of these two items, i.e. M2, increased by 3.4% to MOP360.1 billion. On an annual basis, M1 and M2 rose 17.5% and 23.2% respectively. The share of Pataca (MOP) in M2 stood at 24.9%, up 0.3 percentage points from a month ago but down 0.1 percentage point from a year earlier. The share of Hong Kong Dollar (HKD) in M2 was 56.0%, down 0.2 percentage points month-to-month but up 3.7 percentage points year-on-year. Deposits Resident deposits rose 3.5% from the preceding month to MOP352.7 billion. Of which, MOP deposits, HKD deposits and other foreign currency deposits increased at respective rates of 5.1%, 3.1% and 2.9%. In the meantime, non-resident deposits decreased 0.2% to MOP124.0 billion while public sector deposits with the banking sector rose 1.3% to MOP42.2 billion. As a result, total deposits with the banking sector rose 2.4% from a month earlier to MOP518.9 billion. The shares of MOP and HKD in total deposits were 21.1% and 47.7% respectively. Loans Domestic loans to the private sector slid 1.0% from a month ago to MOP189.4 billion. Among which, MOP56.5 billion was MOP-denominated and MOP117.7 billion was denominated in HKD, representing 29.8% and 62.1% of the total respectively. External loans also decreased 0.6% to MOP212.0 billion; of which, loans denominated in MOP and HKD accounted for 0.8% (MOP1.6 billion) and 24.6% (MOP52.1 billion) respectively. Loan-to-deposit ratios As domestic loans to the private sector decreased while resident deposits increased, the loan-to-deposit ratio for the resident sector at end-October dropped 2.1 percentage points month-to-month to 48.0%. The ratio for both the resident and non-resident sectors was 77.4%, down 2.5 percentage points from end-September.