On March 11, 2022, the people’s Bank of China released the main financial data for February 2022. The focus is as follows:
First, the increment of social finance was lower than the market expectation, and the significant year-on-year decrease in credit funds was the main reason. In February 2021, the increment of social financing scale was 1.19 trillion yuan, which was lower than the market expectation (2.22 trillion yuan), with a year-on-year decrease of 531.5 billion yuan. In terms of credit funds, RMB loans, foreign currency loans and undiscounted bank acceptance bills increased by 533.6 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 918 billion yuan. Among them, RMB loans increased by 908.4 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 432.9 billion yuan, and undiscounted bank acceptance bills decreased by 422.8 billion yuan, which are the main reasons for the significant year-on-year decrease in social finance. Foreign currency loans increased by 1.6 billion yuan, the only increase in credit funds. From the perspective of direct financing, bond financing continued to increase year-on-year. The total net financing of corporate bonds and government bonds was 372.6 billion yuan, which brought support to social finance. The reasons include: on the one hand, after the central bank lowered the reverse repurchase and MLF interest rates in January, the overall downward movement of the policy interest rate system led to the decline of the market interest rate. At the same time, the central bank continued to increase the amount of liquidity in February, the overall market liquidity was abundant, and the cost of bond issuance decreased. The monthly weighted average interest rate of pledged bond repurchase in February was 2.06%, 0.04 percentage points lower than that of the same period last year. On the other hand, the Ministry of finance has previously issued to all localities in advance the quota of some new special bonds of 1.46 trillion yuan in 2022. The issuance speed of local government bonds has significantly accelerated, which has promoted the net financing scale of government bonds. In addition, the domestic stock financing of non-financial enterprises was 58.5 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 10.8 billion yuan. In terms of off balance sheet items, entrusted loans and trust loans decreased by 2.6 billion yuan and 18.5 billion yuan respectively year-on-year, the reduction scale decreased, and the shadow banking business will gradually move towards standardized development.
Second, the RMB loans of financial institutions increased less year-on-year, and the medium and long-term loans of enterprises (Institutions) decreased significantly. In February 2022, RMB loans increased by 1.23 trillion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 125.8 billion yuan, mainly due to the significant decrease of 1.05 trillion yuan in medium and long-term loans. From the perspective of the residential sector, the medium and long-term loans of the residential sector decreased by 45.9 billion yuan, an increase of 457.2 billion yuan year-on-year. Since 2022, affected by the uncertainty of the epidemic situation and the stabilization of the property market, the real estate market has continued to maintain a cooling trend. According to Kerui statistics, during the Spring Festival, there was “zero supply” in more than 30 cities in China, and the trading volume decreased by 84% month on month and 40% year-on-year. Only a few hot cities such as Shanghai and Foshan increased. In February 2022, the transaction area and number of commercial houses in 30 large and medium-sized cities were 7.1493 million square meters and 65700 units, with a significant year-on-year decrease of 27.3% and 28.3%, continuing the downward trend in January. From the perspective of the enterprise sector, the new loans of enterprises (Institutions) were 1.24 trillion yuan, an increase of 40 billion yuan year-on-year. Among them, short-term loans increased by 161.4 billion yuan, bill financing increased by 490.7 billion yuan, and medium and long-term loans significantly decreased by 594.8 billion yuan. It is noteworthy that the medium and long-term loans of enterprises have increased slightly again since the year-on-year increase in January, and the decline is large. The bill financing has increased significantly, and the phenomenon of “filling loans with bills” is obvious. Recently, due to the influence of epidemic prevention and control factors and the interference of regional political pattern factors, the positive expectations of enterprises for future operation have weakened, and the power of medium and long-term credit demand is insufficient.
Third, the growth rate of M2 and social finance fell slightly, but remained in the “9” and “10” range. In February, the year-on-year growth rate of M2 was 9.2%, 0.6 percentage points lower than that of the previous month. The year-on-year growth rate of social finance was 10.2%, 0.3 percentage points lower than that of the previous month. The decrease in the year-on-year growth rate of M2 is related to the increase of fiscal deposits of 600.2 billion yuan in the current month. Since fiscal deposits are not within the statistical caliber of M2, tax payment will suppress m2. On the whole, the weakening of financial data in February was mainly affected by the joint action of internal and external factors. The government work report proposes to “strengthen the implementation of prudent monetary policy”, “expand the scale of new loans” and “moderately advance infrastructure investment”. It is expected that the follow-up policy level will continue to make efforts, take further measures to underpin economic development, stabilize enterprises’ expectations of future economic growth, improve enterprises’ credit demand, and the growth rate of M2 and social finance is expected to pick up, However, the probability will still operate in the “9” and “10” range.
