According to statistics released today by the Monetary Authority of Macao, money supply retreated in February. As total loans increased 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 and demand deposits dropped 8.5% and 1.2% respectively. M1 thus decreased 2.5% from one month earlier. Concurrently, quasi-monetary liabilities dropped 0.6%. The sum of these two items, i.e. M2, decreased 0.9% to MOP457.0 billion. On an annual basis, M1 and M2 rose 14.1% and 17.0% respectively. The share of Pataca (MOP) in M2 stood at 24.5%, virtually unchanged from a month ago but down 0.1 percentage point from a year earlier. The share of Hong Kong Dollar (HKD) in M2 was 50.4%, down 0.8 percentage points month-to-month or 4.2 percentage points year-on-year. Deposits Resident deposits decreased 0.7% from the preceding month to MOP447.2 billion. Of which, MOP deposits and HKD deposits decreased at respective rates of 0.2% and 2.5% whereas other foreign currency deposits grew 2.7%. Non-resident deposits rose 3.0% to MOP194.8 billion. Public sector deposits with the banking sector also increased 1.4% to MOP84.6 billion. As a result, total deposits with the banking sector grew 0.5% from a month earlier to MOP726.6 billion. The shares of MOP and HKD in total deposits were 18.8% and 41.6% respectively. Loans Domestic loans to the private sector increased 2.1% from a month ago to MOP274.5 billion. Among which, MOP79.4 billion was MOP-denominated and MOP171.3 billion was denominated in HKD, representing 28.9% and 62.4% of the total respectively. On the other hand, external loans kept virtually unchanged at MOP290.3 billion; of which, loans denominated in MOP and HKD accounted for 1.6% (MOP4.6 billion) and 23.1% (MOP67.0 billion) respectively. Loan-to-deposit ratios The loan-to-deposit ratio for the resident sector at end-February rose 1.2 percentage points from the previous month to 51.6%. The ratio for both the resident and non-resident sectors also grew, by 0.4 percentage points to 77.7%. For enquiry, please contact:
Research and Statistics Department, Monetary Authority of Macao (Tel: 83952532; Fax: 28353042)
