China's new bank lending reached 1.3 trillion yuan ($190 billion) in March, official media said on Friday citing sources, posting a third consecutive month of strong loan growth that offered a tentative sign of economic recovery.
Domestic media had already indicated a large figure was likely for March, with the influential Caijing Magazine reporting on Thursday that the overall number was about 1.6 trillion yuan.
The official China Securities Journal also reported that the proportion of bill financing in new March lending was significantly above the year-earlier figure. This year's new lending has included a high proportion of discounted bill financing, generally used to meet companies' short-term cash needs, fuelling worries that much of the surge in loans may be funding stock market speculation rather than business operations or investment.
The China Securities Journal said the authorities were stepping up their checks of bill financing and had notified commercial banks that it was forbidden to transfer funds raised from discounted bills into deposit accounts. The paper also cited a regulatory official as saying that the current increase in credit was basically reflecting the demands of the real economy.
The rise in March would bring the first-quarter figure for new lending to about 4 trillion yuan, close to the 5 trillion yuan minimum target for the whole year. The lending figures provide another bit of potentially positive news for China's economic outlook, after the official purchasing managers' index for March, released on Thursday, crossed into expansionary territory for the first time since September, although data have been mixed and several economists believe it is too early to declare that a recovery is under way.
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