According to statistics released today by the Monetary Authority of Macao, money supply dropped in August. As total loans increased at a faster pace than total deposits, the overall loan-to-deposit ratio of the banking sector rose from a month earlier. Money supply Currency in circulation grew 1.9% whereas demand deposits dropped 2.3%. M1 thus decreased 1.6% from one month earlier. Concurrently, quasi-monetary liabilities grew 0.2%. The sum of these two items, i.e. M2, decreased 0.1% to MOP489.1 billion. On an annual basis, M1 and M2 rose 10.6% and 16.6% respectively. The share of Pataca (MOP) in M2 stood at 24.8%, up 0.2 percentage points from a month ago or 0.1 percentage point from a year earlier. The share of Hong Kong Dollar (HKD) in M2 was 50.4%, up 0.5 percentage points month-to-month but down 2.5 percentage points year-on-year. Deposits Resident deposits decreased 0.1% from the preceding month to MOP479.1 billion. Of which, MOP deposits and HKD deposits increased at respective rates of 0.7% and 0.9% whereas other foreign currency deposits dropped 2.7%. Non-resident deposits rose 2.8% to MOP232.2 billion. Public sector deposits with the banking sector also increased 1.9% to MOP90.6 billion. As a result, total deposits with the banking sector grew 0.9% from a month earlier to MOP801.8 billion. The shares of MOP and HKD in total deposits were 18.5% and 41.5% respectively. Loans Domestic loans to the private sector increased 1.6% from a month ago to MOP322.7 billion. Among which, MOP89.7 billion was MOP-denominated and MOP203.2 billion was denominated in HKD, representing 27.8% and 62.9% of the total respectively. On the other hand, external loans rose 1.5% to MOP342.9 billion; of which, loans denominated in MOP and HKD accounted for 1.4% (MOP4.9 billion) and 23.6% (MOP80.8 billion) respectively. Loan-to-deposit ratios The loan-to-deposit ratio for the resident sector at end-August rose 0.8 percentage points from the previous month to 56.7%. The ratio for both the resident and non-resident sectors also grew by 0.5 percentage points to 83.0%.