China's commercial banks are making efforts to curb the excessive growth in credit supply in a bid to meet their goals this year, 21st Century Business Herald reports.

Currently, most lenders are tightening note financing as a measure to curb the credit supply. Although statistics show that China's note financing value slipped 17.2 billion yuan (US$2.25 billion) in May, the central bank is still facing challenging situations in excessive growth in credit supply.

Statistics show that in the first five months of this year, banks granted 2.09 trillion yuan in new loans, up 311.5 billion from the same period in 2006.

China's newly added loans surged to 1.42 trillion in the first quarter, up 13 percent from the same period last year and almost half of the quota set by the central bank for the whole year.

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Data from the central bank indicate that in the first quarter of this year, the new note financing of all financial institutions in China reached 81.9 billion yuan. In April, domestic banks granted 422 billion yuan in new loans, bringing the amount for the first four months to 1.8 trillion yuan - more than half the total for the entire 2006.

An insider at a medium-sized commercial bank said that the previous booming note financing business is becoming dull now. According to statistics from www.chinacp.com.cn, a website specialized in note trading, at 4:30 p.m. on June 14, only 15 financial institutions, including Bank of China and China Construction Bank, quoted prices for notes on discount, with the lowest discount rate reaching 3.6 percent.

But on January 31 this year, a total of 25 financial institutions quoted prices for notes on discount with the lowest rate being 2.76 percent.

Executives at some commercial banks said other measures to curb credit supply growth include controlling new loans, raising reserve requirements for branches and sub-branches, and adjusting the loan structure.

Some domestic commercial bank headquarters have set deposit-loan ratio and note financing restrictions for their branches in Shanghai, so Shanghai's credit supply growth experienced a slowdown recently.

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