New social finance exceeded expectations, and the growth rate of social finance stock picked up. In March, social finance increased by 4.65 trillion yuan, higher than the same period last year (3.38 trillion yuan) and market expectations (3.55 trillion yuan); The stock of social finance rose to 325.6 trillion yuan, with a year-on-year growth rate of 10.6%, an increase of 0.4 percentage points over the previous period, and the growth rate was the highest since August last year.
Focus on the long-term trend of credit. As our previous view, there is no need to worry too much about the short downturn of credit in February. The government work report emphasizes "expanding the scale of new loans" and "prudent implementation of monetary policy". Therefore, we should be optimistic about this year's credit expansion. We reiterate that the recovery of social finance growth driven by credit expansion is a long-term trend, and the growth of social finance stock matching the growth of nominal GDP will show the characteristics of "quarterly recovery".
New social finance increased by about 1.27 trillion yuan year-on-year, mainly driven by on balance sheet credit, non-standard financing and government bond financing. In March, the new domestic and foreign currency loans were about 3.26 trillion yuan, an increase of 477.4 billion yuan year-on-year, promoting 37.5% of the new social finance. In March, the scale of non-standard financing rebounded slightly, with a total increase of 13.3 billion yuan, an increase of 426.2 billion yuan year-on-year, promoting 33.5% of new social finance. Among them, trust loans decreased by 25.9 billion yuan, and off balance sheet bill financing and entrusted loans increased by 28.6 billion yuan and 10.6 billion yuan respectively, reflecting the marginal improvement of off balance sheet financing of real estate enterprises. Subject to the restriction that the amount of special bonds approved in advance needs to be issued in the first quarter, the scale of government bond lending has increased significantly. In March, government bond financing increased by 705.2 billion yuan, an increase of 392.1 billion yuan year-on-year, promoting 30.8% of new social finance.
The overall recovery and expansion of credit, and the structure still needs to be improved. In March, RMB loans increased by 3.13 trillion yuan, higher than the same period last year (2.73 trillion yuan) and market expectations (2.75 trillion yuan). Credit expansion is mainly reflected in the enterprise side, and the resident side credit is still cold. On the residential side, short-term loans increased by 384.8 billion yuan (a year-on-year decrease of 139.4 billion yuan) and medium and long-term loans increased by 373.5 billion yuan (a year-on-year decrease of 250.4 billion yuan), indicating that residents' consumption and housing loan demand are still depressed, but slightly improved compared with February. In March, on the enterprise side, new bill financing was 318.7 billion yuan (an increase of 471.2 billion yuan year-on-year), new short-term loans were 808.9 billion yuan (an increase of 434.1 billion yuan year-on-year), and new medium and long-term loans were 1.34 trillion yuan (an increase of 14.8 billion yuan year-on-year). From a year-on-year perspective, the financing demand of the real economy is concentrated in the short term, and the year-on-year increase is mainly from bill financing and short-term loans (accounting for 98.4% of the new credit at the enterprise end), indicating that enterprise financing is still cautious and the credit structure needs to be improved.
The scale of deposits increased steadily, and the margin of net financial investment increased. In March, RMB deposits increased by 4.49 trillion yuan, with a year-on-year growth rate of 10.0%, an increase of 0.2 percentage points over the previous period, and the growth rate was the highest since March last year. In March, the deposit scale of resident households increased by 2.70 trillion yuan (an increase of 76.2 billion yuan year-on-year), and the deposit scale of non-financial enterprises increased by 2.65 trillion yuan (an increase of 92.2 billion yuan year-on-year). The overall trend of the deposit scale of resident households and non-financial enterprises was relatively stable. In March, the scale of fiscal deposits decreased by 842.5 billion yuan, an increase of 35.7 billion yuan year-on-year. Considering that the financing scale of government bonds increased in the current month, but the Financial deposits decreased year-on-year, reflecting the marginal increase of financial net investment and the marginal acceleration of financial expenditure, we expect this to provide support for infrastructure investment in the second quarter.
The overall recovery and expansion of credit led to the recovery of M2 year-on-year growth; The year-on-year growth rate of M1 was the same as that in the previous period. In March, M2 increased by 9.7% year-on-year, higher than the market expectation (9.2%), up 0.5 percentage points from the previous period. The year-on-year growth recovery of M2 was mainly affected by the overall recovery and expansion of credit. In March, the year-on-year growth rate of M1 was 4.7%, unchanged from the previous period, higher than the market expectation (4.3%), indicating that residents and enterprises have abundant liquidity. With the recovery of M2 growth rate, the scissors difference between M2 and M1 expanded from 4.5 percentage points in February to 5.0 percentage points in March, close to the average value in the fourth quarter of 2021 (5.6 percentage points), indicating that the overall investment demand needs to be improved.
