Bankers expect unchanged monetary policy

More than half of Chinese bankers expect the monetary policy to stay unchanged in the next quarter, a survey by the central bank said.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

According to the survey, 60.5 percent of the bankers thought this quarter's monetary policy was "moderate", down 5.9 percentage points from the previous quarter, and 14.8 percent of the bankers regarded the policy as "moderately loose", a slide of 11.8 percentage points. As for the expectations for the monetary policy in the next three months, 51.7 percent said they thought it would maintain the status quo.

Bankers' confidence index for the macro-economy stayed high at 69.8 percent, almost the same as the fourth quarter in 2009. The bankers expect a continuous recovery of the macro-economy in the second quarter of 2010, as the macro-economic expectation index increased by 2.5 percentage points to 52.4 percent, the People's Bank of China said.

The loan demand index increased by 2.1 percentage points to 69.1 percent compared with the previous quarter.

Bankers' outlook for the banking industry in the next quarter stayed stable with the index edging up 0.1 percentage point to 69.6 percent, the central bank said.

The quarterly survey, conducted by the central bank, was done among the senior executives of the country's 2,900 banking institutions.