DeepDive: Data Dump October 2023

While China’s macro data showed some signs of improvement in certain pockets of the economy in September, the housing market has remained weak through October and financing conditions for SMEs appear tight. Our latest DeepDive has more.

Corporate loan data for September remained robust, following a record high in August. Credit demand by businesses has been strong this year, hitting several new highs through September. However, questions remain as to how these loans have been put to use. As we argued in QuickScan: Taking Stock of Money Supply Developments, some of these loans may have been underutilised, as we noted a jump in corporate time deposits at China’s largest banks, while demand deposits have shown no signs of increasing, a trend that continued in September.