The nation’s M1B, a broad measure of money supply that includes currency held by the public and deposits, surged 30.3 percent last month from a year earlier, posting the highest increase since September 1988, the central bank said yesterday.
However, M2, which includes M1B, time deposits, time savings deposits, foreign currency deposits and mutual funds, declined 5.99 percent last month from a year ago because of a high comparison base, the bank said.
“M1B’s annual growth rose to 30.3 percent last month mainly because of the steady transfer of funds from time and savings deposits to demand deposits,” Dawn Chen (陳一端), deputy chief of the central bank’s economic research department, told a media briefing.
“Liquidity in the stock market was abundant,” Chen said.
For the full year, M1B grew 16.54 percent from the previous year, while M2 rose 7.21 percent.
Asked whether the bank expects M1B to expand this year because of capital inflows from Chinese domestic qualified institutional investors, Chen said that the narrow monetary aggregate could still rise but the rate of expansion might not be big because of a high comparison base last year.
Demand deposits increased 31.3 percent, or NT$239.4 billion, to NT$9.5 trillion last month, while foreign currency deposits rose 0.7 percent to NT$2.4 trillion partly because of an increase in personal foreign currency deposits, Chen said.
Meanwhile, total outstanding loans and investments of major financial institutions increased 0.73 percent year-on-year last month after a 0.62 percent contraction in November, the central bank said.
Chen attributed the increase to a rise in public loans and a moderate decline in loans to the private sector.
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