According to statistics released today by the Monetary Authority of Macao, broad money supply continued to fall in August. As total loans grew 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 dropped 0.8% whereas demand deposits grew 1.5%. M1 thus increased 1.1% from one month earlier. Concurrently, quasi-monetary liabilities dropped 1.7%. The sum of these two items, i.e. M2, decreased 1.4% to MOP478.5 billion. On an annual basis, M1 and M2 dropped 5.0% and 2.2% respectively. The share of Pataca (MOP) in M2 stood at 28.0%, down 0.3 percentage points from a month ago but up 3.2 percentage points from a year earlier. The share of Hong Kong Dollar (HKD) in M2 was 49.1%, up 0.6 percentage points month-to-month but down 1.3 percentage points year-on-year. The share of Chinese Yuan (CNY) was 10.1%, down 0.9 percentage points month-to-month or 5.9 percentage points year-on-year. The share of United States Dollar (USD) was 10.6%, up 0.6 percentage points month-to-month or 3.8 percentage points year-on-year.

Deposits

Resident deposits decreased 1.4% from the preceding month to MOP467.0 billion. Of which, MOP HKD, CNY and other foreign currency deposits decreased at respective rates of 2.6%, 0.2%, 9.5% and 2.1% whereas USD deposits increased 4.7%. Non-resident deposits rose 2.9% to MOP256.1 billion. Public sector deposits with the banking sector increased 2.1% to MOP125.6 billion. As a result, total deposits with the banking sector grew 0.4% from a month earlier to MOP848.6 billion. The shares of MOP, HKD, CNY and USD in total deposits were 19.7%, 41.0%, 12.3% and 23.2% respectively.

Loans

Domestic loans to the private sector increased 0.5% from a month ago to MOP386.1 billion. Among which, MOP103.6 billion was MOP-denominated, MOP252.9 billion was denominated in HKD, MOP3.1 billion was denominated in CNY and MOP23.9 billion was denominated in USD, representing 26.8%, 65.5%, 0.8% and 6.2% of the total respectively. On the other hand, external loans grew 1.9% to MOP395.2 billion; of which, loans denominated in MOP, HKD, CNY and USD accounted for 1.5% (MOP5.8 billion), 23.7% (MOP93.8 billion), 19.4% (MOP76.7 billion) and 49.9% (MOP197.1 billion) respectively.

Operating ratios

At end-August, the loan-to-deposit ratio for the resident sector grew 0.8 percentage points from the previous month to 65.2%. The ratio for both the resident and non-resident sectors also rose 0.8 percentage points to 92.1%. The one-month and three-month current assets to liabilities ratios stayed at relatively high levels, marked at 60.2% and 60.0% respectively. The non-performing loan ratio, an indicator for bank asset quality, was 0.1%, virtually stable when compared with the previous month but down 0.2 percentage points from the same period last year.