Eurozone loans to private sector pick up: ECB

Eurozone bank loans to the private sector, which had practically dried up in recent months, rose in July, and growth in eurozone money supply also accelerated, new data showed on Tuesday. The European Central Bank, in its regular monthly money supply data, calculated that growth in eurozone bank loans to the private sector grew fractionally by 0.1 percent in July after contracting by 0.2 percent in June.
At the same time, the eurozone money supply is growing more strongly than expected, the data showed, with the broad M3 indicator rising 3.8 percent last month, following a gain of 3.2 percent in June. Analysts polled by Dow Jones Newswires had been pencilling in only a slight pick-up in growth to a rate of 3.3 percent for July. The ECB regards the M3 figure as a key guide to inflation pressures and uses it to set interest rates accordingly. The central bank seeks to keep eurozone inflation below but close to 2.0 percent but it stood at 2.4 percent in July.