China introduces new version of 100 Yuan banknote

New data from the People’s Bank of China reveals total social financing, the broadest measure of credit growth, fell to 476.7 billion yuan in October, 63% below the level of September.

The data underscore the government’s challenge to spur an economic recovery even after boosting fiscal stimulus and continued monetary easing. The drop was in line with the trends of recent years, when China’s lending has trailed off in the year’s final quarter as banks reached the limits of their annual loan quotas.

The slowdown of the world’s second-largest economy exerted increasing pressure on Chinese banks’ profitability and asset quality.

In 2007, the central bank launched the first offshore RMB cash storage in Hong Kong managed by Bank of China, which provides cash and flow-back services for overseas markets.

More security features were added, including widening the security strip, to make it “easier for machines to read” and “more convenient for the public to distinguish the authentic notes from the fakery”, the central People’s Bank of China (PBOC) said previously.

Chinese banks extended 513.6 billion yuan ($80.66 billion) in net new yuan loans in October, disappointing analyst expectations and down 51 percent on the previous month’s 1.05 trillion yuan.

China’s economic growth slowed to 6.9% in the third quarter of the year, its weakest performance since the 2008 global financial crisis.

Notably, the TSF number does not reflect debt issued by local governments through the recently established municipal bond market, as opposed to debt issued by third-party local government financing vehicles in the past, a heavy contributor to TSF, he said.