According to statistics released today by the Monetary Authority of Macao, money supply retreated in February. 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.

Money supply

Currency in circulation and demand deposits dropped 1.0% and 3.3% respectively. M1 thus decreased 2.9% from one month earlier. Concurrently, quasi-monetary liabilities dropped 0.6%. The sum of these two items, i.e. M2, decreased 0.9% to MOP469.6 billion. On an annual basis, M1 grew 3.0% whereas M2 dropped 2.5%. The share of Pataca (MOP) in M2 stood at 30.7%, up 0.1 percentage point from a month ago or 3.2 percentage points from a year earlier. The share of Hong Kong Dollar (HKD) in M2 was 51.4%, up 0.2 percentage points month-to-month or 1.1 percentage points year-on-year. The share of Chinese Yuan (CNY) was 5.8%, down 0.6 percentage points month-to-month or 6.1 percentage points year-on-year. The share of United States Dollar (USD) was 9.8%, up 0.4 percentage points month-to-month or 1.7 percentage points year-on-year.

Deposits

Resident deposits decreased 0.9% from the preceding month to MOP456.6 billion. Of which, MOP, HKD, CNY and other foreign currency deposits decreased at respective rates of 0.6%, 0.6%, 9.9% and 2.6% whereas USD deposits increased 2.9%. Non-resident deposits rose 2.2% to MOP292.4 billion. Public sector deposits with the banking sector increased 5.1% to MOP136.5 billion. As a result, total deposits with the banking sector grew 1.0% from a month earlier to MOP885.6 billion. The shares of MOP, HKD, CNY and USD in total deposits were 20.6%, 44.5%, 7.5% and 24.3% respectively.

Loans

Domestic loans to the private sector increased 0.4% from a month ago to MOP390.8 billion. Among which, MOP110.0 billion was MOP-denominated, MOP258.3 billion was denominated in HKD, MOP2.1 billion was denominated in CNY and MOP17.0 billion was denominated in USD, representing 28.1%, 66.1%, 0.5% and 4.4% of the total respectively. On the other hand, external loans dropped 0.1% to MOP364.2 billion; of which, loans denominated in MOP, HKD, CNY and USD accounted for 1.7% (MOP6.2 billion), 26.3% (MOP95.8 billion), 18.5% (MOP67.2 billion) and 47.6% (MOP173.4 billion) respectively.

Operating ratios

At end-February, the loan-to-deposit ratio for the resident sector kept virtually stable from the previous month at 65.9%. The ratio for both the resident and non-resident sectors dropped 0.7 percentage points to 85.3%. The one-month and three-month current assets to liabilities ratios stayed at relatively high levels, marked at 55.8% and 60.3% 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.