According to statistics released today by the Monetary Authority of Macao, money supply rebounded in March. As total deposits increased at a faster pace than total loans, the overall loan-to-deposit ratio of the banking sector dropped slightly from a month earlier. Money supply Currency in circulation dropped 2.5% while demand deposits grew 3.4%. M1 thus increased 2.2% from one month earlier. Concurrently, quasi-monetary liabilities dropped 0.3%. The sum of these two items, i.e. M2, increased marginally by 0.1% to MOP469.8 billion. On an annual basis, M1 grew 5.8% whereas M2 dropped 1.6%. The share of Pataca (MOP) in M2 stood at 30.2%, down 0.5 percentage points from a month ago but up 2.7 percentage points from a year earlier. The share of Hong Kong Dollar (HKD) in M2 was 51.7%, up 0.3 percentage points month-to-month or 1.9 percentage points year-on-year. The share of Chinese Yuan (CNY) was 5.9%, up 0.1 percentage point month-to-month but down 6.1 percentage points year-on-year. The share of United States Dollar (USD) was 9.8%, down 0.1 percentage point month-to-month but up 1.2 percentage points year-on-year. Deposits Resident deposits increased 0.1% from the preceding month to MOP457.2 billion. Of which, MOP and USD deposits decreased at respective rates of 1.5% and 0.7% whereas HKD, CNY and other foreign currency deposits increased 0.7%, 1.4% and 7.9% respectively. Non-resident deposits dropped 1.0% to MOP289.5 billion. Public sector deposits with the banking sector increased 8.6% to MOP148.3 billion. As a result, total deposits with the banking sector grew 1.1% from a month earlier to MOP895.0 billion. The shares of MOP, HKD, CNY and USD in total deposits were 20.6%, 45.4%, 8.1% and 22.8% respectively. Loans Domestic loans to the private sector increased 0.8% from a month ago to MOP393.8 billion. Among which, MOP112.0 billion was MOP-denominated, MOP260.1 billion was denominated in HKD, MOP2.1 billion was denominated in CNY and MOP16.1 billion was denominated in USD, representing 28.4%, 66.0%, 0.5% and 4.1% of the total respectively. Analysed by economic sector, “information technology”, “non-monetary financial institutions” and “restaurants, hotels and similar” increased at respective rates of 28.6%, 25.3% and 5.8% compared with a quarter ago, whereas “wholesale and retail trade” and “transport, warehouse and communications” dropped 8.3% and 3.2% respectively. External loans rose 1.2% to MOP368.5 billion; of which, loans denominated in MOP, HKD, CNY and USD accounted for 1.7% (MOP6.2 billion), 26.1% (MOP96.2 billion), 17.8% (MOP65.4 billion) and 48.2% (MOP177.5 billion) respectively. Operating ratios At end-March, the loan-to-deposit ratio for the resident sector dropped 0.8 percentage points from the previous month to 65.0%. The ratio for both the resident and non-resident sectors dropped 0.1 percentage point to 85.2%. The one-month and three-month current assets to liabilities ratios stayed at relatively high levels, marked at 52.5% and 59.8% respectively. The non-performing loan ratio, an indicator for bank asset quality, was 0.1%, virtually unchanged from one month earlier and one year ago.
