At the end of January, there was a “pulse” rise in the bill discount interest rate. The main reasons are summarized as follows:
☆ from both sides of supply and demand, it is expected that in late January, some banks will have an impulse in corporate credit, and enterprises have a large demand for invoicing, resulting in the intensification of the contradiction between bill supply and demand. On the demand side, the amount of discount decreased significantly after entering the latter ten days. On the one hand, it may be related to the fact that some banks’ narrow credit extension has basically complied with the growth plan in January. On the other hand, it does not rule out that some banks’ non bill type has a substitution effect on the impulse of corporate credit extension, thus reducing the scale of bill financing. In terms of supply, the amount of bill acceptance in January was about 2.9 trillion, a new high since 2019. Among them, the discount acceptance ratio in late January was 49%, which was more than 20 percentage points lower than that in December 2021 and lower than the level of 57% in January 2021. This may be related to the upward risk of the current commercial ticket market, and enterprises often use silver tickets for upstream and downstream payments near the Spring Festival, thus pushing up the scale of bill supply.
☆ from the perspective of seasonal factors, when the Spring Festival holiday spans the end of January, the superposition of seasonal effects leads to the preventive increase of the provision level of banks, and the liquidity often maintains a tight balance. The capital business will turn to the defense mode, and the capital financing is relatively cautious. Although the central bank will increase the capital investment during the Spring Festival, the overall liquidity environment will maintain a tight balance, which is also easy to lead to the rise of bill interest rates.
☆ from the perspective of transaction behavior, the bank received a large amount of bills in December 2021. With the rise of bill interest rate in January 2022, the bill business faced greater market risk, which exacerbated the selling pressure of bills. In December 2021, banks significantly increased their efforts to collect bills at low interest rates, and the bill discount increased by 408.7 billion, a record high in the same period. In January 2022, as the bill interest rate returned to the normal level, the market risk of bill business increased, and banks suffered floating losses. In addition, the pace of credit supply began to accelerate in the middle of the year, which led to the intensification of bank bill selling pressure and formed a certain “chain reaction”, boosting the “pulse” rise of bill interest rate.
New RMB loans are expected to remain at 3.3-3.6 trillion in January, and the warming of credit demand is still on the way
First, the credit boom is inertial, and the probability of “credit pulse” in January is small. The characteristics of “weak total amount and poor structure” of credit supply from November to December 2021 are the reflection of deep-seated contradictions in the economy. Although the central bank adopted the policy of “stabilizing the demand growth” in December last year, it has adopted the policy of “stabilizing the demand growth” in a certain time lag. This makes the financial data in January inevitably show the characteristics of the end of the year, and the probability of “credit pulse” is small.
Second, structural differentiation is still the main tone, and the “triple differentiation” of regions, institutions and industries will be reflected in the credit data in January. ① Regionally, credit supply in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and other regions with high economic prosperity is “prosperous in both supply and demand”, but credit growth in economically backward regions is weak; ② In terms of institutions, the credit supply of large state-owned banks has maintained a high momentum, and it is expected to increase year-on-year in January; The joint-stock banks showed an obvious “uneven hot and cold” phenomenon. The credit supply in the first ten days was generally weak, with some strength in the middle and late ten days; The new scale of credit supply of high-quality urban rural commercial banks in Jiangsu and Zhejiang is expected to increase year-on-year; ③ In the industry, the new credit is expected to focus on the business of banking and government institutions, large central and state-owned enterprises, key infrastructure projects, etc., and the prosperity of the highly market-oriented industry and project reserves are still weak.
Third, housing related financing is in a difficult recovery period, mortgage demand is weakening, and private enterprises are still under pressure to obtain development loans. In January, real estate investment and housing sales fell sharply year-on-year, and the total land acquisition of the top 100 real estate enterprises decreased by 63% year-on-year. Most of the land acquisition institutions are local real estate enterprises with government background. Specifically: ① housing sales continued to weaken, resulting in insufficient demand for new mortgages. The demand for mortgages is expected to weaken in January, and there is more room for mortgage prices to decline in the future. ② Under the continuous pressure of sales, the pressure on some real estate enterprises to “guarantee the delivery of houses” is not small. Before the Spring Festival, the rigid payment of migrant workers’ wages consumes the cash flow of enterprises, and the suspension of land acquisition increases the pressure on local finance. Therefore, we have reason to believe that the investment of development loans in January was still “uneven”, and the new housing related financing moved to banking and government financing business.
Risk analysis: at the beginning of 2022, the credit supply weakened significantly, and the downward pressure on the economy remained unabated.
