Statistics | Money supply continued to decline in March

The Monetary Authority of Macau released the monetary and financial statistics for March yesterday, and these show a continuing decline in money supply. As total loans increased while total deposits dropped, the overall loan-to-deposit ratio of the banking sector in March rose from a month earlier. Currency in circulation dropped 5.7 percent, whereas demand deposits grew 0.7 percent.
In comparison to the preceding month, total resident deposits decreased 0.7 percent to MOP466.2 billion, whereas total non-resident deposits dropped 3.4 percent to MOP236.5 billion. Public sector deposits with the banking sector increased 7.2 percent to MOP113.4 billion. As a result, total deposits with the banking sector dropped 0.5 percent from a month earlier to MOP816.1 billion.
Meanwhile, total domestic loans to the private sector increased 2.3 percent to MOP354.2 billion. Analyzed by economic sector, the total value of loans granted to corporations dealing in “information technology”, “education” and “restaurants, hotels and similar” increased by 29.3 pct, 21.1 pct and 16.7 pct respectively compared with a quarter ago. Meanwhile, “non-monetary financial institutions” and “electricity, gas and water” dropped 54.4 pct and 7.1 pct respectively. Moveover, external loans dropped marginally by 0.1 pct to MOP354.6 billion.
As a result, the loan-to-deposit ratio of the resident sector at the of end of March rose 0.9 percentage points from the previous month to sit at 61.1 percent; the ratio for both the resident and non-resident sectors grew by 1.3 percentage points to 86.9 percent.