March 14 (Bloomberg) -- Chinese banks extended a less-than- expected 535.6 billion yuan ($81.5 billion) of new local- currency loans last month, the central bank said on its website today.
That compared with the median forecast of 600 billion yuan in a Bloomberg News survey of 19 economists. Banks extended 1.04 trillion yuan worth of new loans in January, highlighting a pattern in which banks tend to lend more at the start of each year.
M2, the broadest measure of money supply, rose 15.7 percent in February from a year earlier, the People’s Bank of China said in the statement. The economists’ median forecast was 17 percent. In January, the gain was 17.2 percent.
Premier Wen Jiabao said March 5 the government has set a money-supply growth target of about 16 percent for 2011. M2 expanded 19.7 percent last year compared with targeted growth of 17 percent.
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