Westpac’s Phat Dragon has a short note out today suggesting that the tightening in Chinese interbank markets is unlikely to ease in the near future:
This somewhat obscure report has come to broader notice as a result of the recent measures focussed on capital flows in various forms. With data up to March, we estimated that around $US90bn of foreign currency would have to be purchased by the Chinese banking system to meet the new regulations by July 1. We lowered that estimate by $US9bn or so after the April data, implying there was still plenty of work to do at the outset of May. With May data now available, we can definitively say that at the beginning of June there was still a major task ahead of the banking system – about $US63bn – the sudden urgency of which has been reflected in the disruptive pricing moves in interbank rates and in the FX market.
The details are that FX loans increased by $US5.8bn in May while FX deposits fell by $US2.3bn. Excluding the policy banks, the FX specific loan to deposit ratio rose by 1.6ppts. Banks sold $US151bn of FX on behalf of clients and bought $US133bn. The net short position of $17.4bn is down from $US34bn in April, $US45bn in March and $US93bn in January. Gross flows recovered from April levels, and are now up by 7%yr.
Bank_FX_and_capital_flows_end_May_2014.pdf by Shaun Salas
