Macao saw its domestic loans to local private sector amount to 93.2 billion patacas (US$11.8 billion) in June this year, an increase of 0.5 percent over the previous month, according to the figures released on Thursday by the Monetary Authority of the Special Administrative Region (SAR).

Of the domestic loans, some 20 billion patacas (2.5 billion dollars) was pataca-denominated and 67.2 billion patacas was denominated in HK dollar, representing 21.4 percent and 72.1 percent of the total respectively, the figures showed.

The Monetary Authority also said that as the growth pace of domestic loans to the private sector is similar to that of resident deposits and public sector deposits with the banking sector, the loan-to-deposit ratio for the resident sector at the end of June remained virtually unchanged from a month ago at 44.1 percent and the ratio for both the resident and non-resident sectors stood at 54.8 percent.

Meanwhile, external loans rose by 6.1 percent month-to-month to 61.9 billion patacas (7.8 billion dollars) in the period, of which loans denominated in pataca and HK dollar accounted for 1.7 percent and 57 percent respectively of the total.

(Xinhua News Agency August 28, 2009)