Liquidity, lending growth ease anew
Credit to Author: MAYVELIN U. CARABALLO, TMT| Date: Fri, 29 Mar 2019 16:16:06 +0000
Money supply posted its slowest growth in more than six years in February amid a sustained deceleration in bank lending, data from the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) showed on Friday.
Domestic liquidity or M3 expanded by 7.1 percent year-on-year to P11.497 trillion, slower than January’s revised 7.7 percent. It was also the slowest M3 growth since the 6.2 percent posted in August 2012.
Month-on-month and seasonally adjusted, M3 grew by 0.8 percent.
“The BSP will continue to closely monitor domestic liquidity dynamics to ensure that overall monetary conditions remain in line with maintaining price and financial stability,” the central bank said in a statement.
An expansion in domestic claims also decelerated to 11.7 percent from January’s revised 12.4 percent, “due mainly to the sustained growth in credit to the private sector.“
Meanwhile, net claims on the central government grew at a faster 8.3 percent from the previous month’s 5.3 percent.
Net foreign assets in peso terms contracted by 1.5 percent, up slightly from January’s 1.2 percent.
Bank lending growth, meanwhile, decelerated for the fourth straight month as it slowed to 13.7 percent in February from 15.3 percent a month earlier.
Including reverse repurchase placements (RRPs) with the BSP, lending growth also moderated to 13.9 percent from January’s revised 14.5 percent.
On a month-on-month and seasonally-adjusted basis, commercial bank loans net of RRPs and inclusive of RRPs increased by 0.4 percent and 0.6 percent, respectively.
Lending for production activities, which accounted for 88.4 percent of the aggregate loan portfolio, grew at a slower 13.6 percent from 15.5 percent in January.
Household consumption loan growth was higher at 14.9 percent from the previous month’s revised 13.2 percent “amid the acceleration in credit card loans, sustained growth in motor vehicle loans, and expansion of salary-based general purpose consumption loans and other types of household loans during the month.”
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