According to statistics released today by the Monetary Authority of Macao, on a monthly basis, broad money supply continued to stay flat in March. As total loans grew much faster than deposits, the overall loan-to-deposit ratio of the banking sector continued to rise.

Money supply

Currency in circulation edged down 0.2% while demand deposits grew 2.2%. M1 thus increased 1.8% from one month earlier. Concurrently, quasi-monetary liabilities dropped 0.2% and offset the rise in narrow money. M2 therefore kept virtually unchanged from the previous month at MOP310.6 billion. On an annual basis, M1 and M2 rose 13.4% and 20.0% respectively. The share of Pataca (MOP) in M2 stood at 25.7%, down 0.5 percentage points over a month ago and 2.2 percentage points from a year earlier. The share of Hong Kong Dollar (HKD) in M2 was 54.6%, up 0.6 percentage points month-to-month and 1.5 percentage points year-on-year.

Deposits

Resident deposits stayed flat from the preceding month at MOP303.8 billion. Of which, HKD deposits increased 1.2% while MOP deposits and other foreign currency deposits decreased at respective rates of 2.0% and 0.6%. In the meantime, non-resident deposits grew 9.1% to MOP124.6 billion while public sector deposits with the banking sector increased 3.0% to MOP30.8 billion. As a result, total deposits with the banking sector rose 2.5% from a month earlier to MOP459.2 billion. The shares of MOP and HKD in total deposits were 20.8% and 44.4% respectively.

Loans

Domestic loans to the private sector increased 2.1% on a monthly basis to MOP170.4 billion. Among which, MOP45.4 billion was MOP-denominated and MOP110.3 billion was denominated in HKD, representing 26.7% and 64.7% of the total respectively. Compared with a quarter ago, loans to “agriculture and fisheries”, loans to “wholesale and retail trade” and “car loans” increased at respective rates of 18.9%, 15.4% and 9.7% whereas those to “manufacturing industries” and “electricity, gas and water” dropped 12.7% and 7.5% respectively.

External loans rose 8.4% to MOP182.2 billion; of which, loans denominated in MOP and HKD accounted for 0.6% (MOP1.1 billion) and 27.9% (MOP50.9 billion) respectively.

Loan-to-deposit ratios

Due to the growth in domestic loans to the private sector, the loan-to-deposit ratio for the resident sector at end-March 2012 rose 0.9 percentage points month-to-month to 50.9%. The ratio for both the resident and non-resident sectors was 76.8%, up 2.0 percentage points from the previous month.