According to statistics released today by the Monetary Authority of Macao, broad money supply grew marginally in March. As total loans increased while total deposits decreased, the overall loan-to-deposit ratio of the banking sector rose from a month earlier.

Money supply

Currency in circulation dropped 0.8% while demand deposits grew 1.9%. M1 thus increased 1.5% from one month earlier. Concurrently, quasi-monetary liabilities slid 0.1%. The sum of these two items, i.e. M2, rose slightly by 0.1% to MOP391.1 billion. On an annual basis, M1 and M2 rose 33.5% and 25.9% respectively. The share of Pataca (MOP) in M2 stood at 24.8%, up 0.2 percentage points from a month ago but down 0.9 percentage points from a year earlier. The share of Hong Kong Dollar (HKD) in M2 was 54.4%, down 0.2 percentage points month-to-month and year-on-year.

Deposits

Resident deposits rose slightly by 0.1% from the preceding month to MOP383.0 billion. Of which, MOP deposits and other foreign currency deposits increased at respective rates of 1.0% and 0.3% while HKD deposits slid 0.3%. Non-resident deposits dropped 1.9% to MOP131.3 billion whereas public sector deposits with the banking sector increased 2.4% to MOP53.7 billion. As a result, total deposits with the banking sector dropped marginally by 0.1% from a month earlier to MOP567.9 billion. The shares of MOP and HKD in total deposits were 20.8% and 47.0% respectively.

Loans

Domestic loans to the private sector increased 1.7% from a month ago to MOP210.8 billion. Among which, MOP67.4 billion was MOP-denominated and MOP125.3 billion was denominated in HKD, representing 32.0% and 59.4% of the total respectively. Analysed by economic sector, loans to “manufacturing industries”, “restaurants, hotels and similar” and “construction and public works” increased at respective rates of 19.5%, 19.4% and 12.9% compared with a quarter ago, whereas loans to “gaming” dropped 58.4%.

External loans increased 9.3% to MOP256.7 billion; of which, loans denominated in MOP and HKD accounted for 0.9% (MOP2.2 billion) and 20.4% (MOP52.3 billion) respectively.

Loan-to-deposit ratios

The loan-to-deposit ratio for the resident sector at end-March rose 0.6 percentage points from the previous month to 48.3%. The ratio for both the resident and non-resident sectors also increased 4.6 percentage points to 82.3%.