According to statistics released today by the Monetary Authority of Macao, money supply continued to grow in August. As total deposits increased at a faster pace than total loans, the overall loan-to-deposit ratio of the banking sector dropped from a month earlier. Concurrently, the non-performing loan ratio, an indicator for bank asset quality, kept virtually stable. Money supply Currency in circulation dropped 0.1% while demand deposits grew 4.2%. M1 thus increased 3.2% from one month earlier. Meanwhile, quasi-monetary liabilities rose 2.4%. The sum of these two items, i.e. M2, increased 2.5% to MOP503.7 billion. On an annual basis, M1 and M2 grew 9.9% and 5.3% respectively. The shares of Pataca (MOP), Hong Kong Dollar (HKD), Chinese Yuan (CNY) and United States Dollar (USD) in M2 were 30.5%, 52.3%, 6.2% and 8.7% respectively. Deposits Resident deposits increased 2.6% from the preceding month to MOP490.5 billion and non-resident deposits grew 1.2% to MOP279.0 billion. Concurrently, public sector deposits with the banking sector decreased 0.5% to MOP156.3 billion. As a result, total deposits with the banking sector increased 1.7% from a month earlier to MOP925.8 billion. The shares of MOP, HKD, CNY and USD in total deposits were 20.6%, 47.8%, 7.9% and 21.1% respectively. Loans Domestic loans to the private sector increased 1.6% from a month ago to MOP408.4 billion. Among which, MOP119.0 billion was MOP-denominated, MOP265.0 billion was denominated in HKD, MOP2.3 billion was denominated in CNY and MOP19.3 billion was denominated in USD, representing 29.1%, 64.9%, 0.6% and 4.7% of the total respectively. External loans grew 0.3% to MOP370.3 billion; of which, loans denominated in MOP, HKD, CNY and USD accounted for 1.8% (MOP6.8 billion), 27.5% (MOP101.8 billion), 12.6% (MOP46.8 billion) and 51.5% (MOP190.6 billion) respectively. Operating ratios At end-August, the loan-to-deposit ratio for the resident sector edged down 0.1 percentage point from the previous month to 63.1%. The ratio for both the resident and non-resident sectors dropped 0.6 percentage points to 84.1%. The one-month and three-month current assets to liabilities ratios stayed at relatively high levels of 61.6% and 59.5% respectively. Furthermore, the non-performing loan ratio was 0.2%, virtually unchanged from one month earlier and up slightly by 0.1 percentage point from one year ago.