Event: on January 12, 2022, the people's Bank of China released monetary and financial data for December. Social finance increased by 2.37 trillion yuan, an increase of 650.8 billion yuan year-on-year, the former value was 2.61 trillion yuan, the year-on-year growth rate of stock was 10.3%, and the former value was 10.1%; RMB loans increased by 1.13 trillion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 0.13 trillion yuan, compared with the previous value of 1.27 trillion yuan; The year-on-year growth rate of M2 was 9.0%, and the previous value was 8.5%.
Core view: the new social finance in December 2021 is slightly lower than the market expectation, the main support comes from direct financing, and the performance of new credit is still weak. On the one hand, the policy layer strictly supervises the financing, corrects the unreasonable behavior in the implementation process, as well as the policies such as reducing the reserve requirement, reducing the small refinancing interest rate for agricultural support, and reducing the one-year LPR interest rate, still need a certain transmission time to be effective. On the other hand, the impact of multiple factors such as the epidemic on the demand side of the real economy has not been completely eliminated. Under the background of great uncertainty in demand, the long-term financing willingness of real enterprises has been significantly suppressed.
Looking ahead, the growth rate of social finance is expected to continue the upward trend, but the upward range is limited. On the one hand, as the newly increased amount of special bonds in 2022 has been issued in advance in December 2021, it is expected that the overall rhythm of government bond issuance in 2022 will be ahead, and the promotion effect of government bond issuance dislocation on new social finance is expected to continue until the beginning of the second quarter of 2022. But at the same time, we also see that the questionnaire survey of bankers of the people's Bank of China in the fourth quarter of 2021 shows that the loan demand index still shows a downward trend, indicating that the real financing demand is still weak. The drag on corporate bond financing caused by the superimposed Yongmei credit risk event will be basically repaired in early 2021, and the supporting effect of corporate bond financing on new social finance will gradually weaken.
At the market level, considering that the main support for the stabilization of the current growth rate of social finance comes from the low base of government and corporate bond financing, the effectiveness of the wide credit policy is limited. At the same time, under the background that the downward pressure on economic growth is still large and inflation has dropped significantly, the necessity of further marginal easing of monetary policy has increased significantly. If the credit starts off well and the performance is less than expected, the interest rate cut is expected to fall in the first quarter. Therefore, the yield of 10-year Treasury bonds is expected to remain low and fluctuate in a narrow range, pending further response from economic fundamentals and policies.
Social Finance: direct financing helped stabilize and recover the growth rate of Social Finance
In December, 2.37 trillion yuan of new social finance was added, which basically met the market expectation (the consensus expectation of wind was 2.43 trillion yuan). Direct financing such as government bonds, corporate bonds and domestic stocks of non-financial enterprises were the main driving items of new social finance in December, and other sub items were basically in line with seasonal performance.
From the data level, direct financing such as government bonds, corporate bonds and domestic stocks of non-financial enterprises were the main driving items of new social finance in December. Among them, the significant increase in government bonds is mainly due to the overall lag in the financing rhythm of special bonds in 2021, while the significant increase in corporate bonds is mainly due to the low base formed by the credit risk event of Yongmei coal in 2020.
Credit: the credit structure needs to be improved, and the financing willingness remains low
The credit structure needs to be improved, and the financing willingness continues to be depressed. In terms of total amount, the performance of new credit is relatively weak compared with the same period in previous years. In December, the new credit was 1.13 trillion yuan, an increase of 0.13 trillion yuan less than the same period in 2020 and 10 billion yuan less than the same period in 2019.
Structurally, bill financing is still the main support, and the year-on-year contraction of enterprise loans has not improved. It can be seen that since 2021, the proportion of new medium and long-term corporate loans in new credit has continued to decline, while the proportion of new bill financing in new credit has tended to rise.
