Signs of monetary and fiscal expansion at last

CHINA - Report 28 Feb 2022 by FAN Gang and Chunyang Wang

Because of the long Chinese New Year holiday, the statistics bureau only announced price, financial and PMI data in February. Producer prices grew more slowly. PPI rose 9.1% y/y, down another 1.2 pps from December. The ex-factory price index of industrial goods rose 8.85% y/y, while CPI growth also slowed. CPI rose 0.9% y/y in January, down 0.6 pps from December. In particular, food prices fell -3.8% y/y, down 2.6 pps from December, dragging CPI down 0.72 pps. That is the leading factor lowering CPI. The falling price levels offer ample room for further money expansion.

At the end of January, M2 rose 9.8% y/y, up 0.8 pps from the end of December, and up 0.4 pps from January 2020. M2 is not strongly affected by the Spring Festival effect. The significant trending upward reflects expansionary monetary policy. M1 fell -1.9% y/y. The adjusted growth rate after taking out the effect of the New Year’s holiday was around 2%. M0 rose 18.5% y/y, a major increase.

The societal financing scale increased by 6.17 trillion yuan in January, much higher than in January 2020, and market expectations. The societal financing scale increased 10.5% y/y, up 0.2 pps from December. The structural composition of societal financing is also improving. PMI fell, but was still in the improvement zone in January. In particular, PMI was 51%, down 1.2 pps from December. This indicates that the overall economic situation is good, and in an expansion zone, but the trend is slowing.

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