Singapore bank lending dips in January over December, on slight fall in business loans

SINGAPORE - Bank lending in Singapore dipped by a marginal 0.04 per cent in January from a month ago, after rising 1.1 per cent in December, as business loans weakened skightly.

Loans through the domestic banking unit - which captures lending in all currencies but mainly reflects Singapore-dollar lending - stood at S$617.09 billion in January, close to December's total of S$617.35 billion.

From a year ago, bank lending in January was up 2.8 per cent compared to S$600.2 billion in January 2015, the preliminary data from the Monetary Authority of Singapore on Tuesday (Feb 28) showed.

Business loans eased 0.07 per cent to S$366.71 billion from S$367 billion in the previous month, mainly due to a 3 per cent fall in loans to the general commerce industry to S$62 billion.

Loans to manufacturers also declined, easing 1.5 per cent to S$25.83 billion. But loans to the building & construction industry grew 0.4 per cent to S$121.83 billion. Lending also rose 0.6 per cent to S$80.83 billion for the finance industry and 5.7 per cent to S$22.28 billion for the transport, storage & communication industry.

Consumer loans continued its month on month growth, though at a much slower pace of 0.02 per cent, down from 0.3 per cent in December. They edged up to S$250.38 billion from S$250.34 billion in December, mostly due to a 0.2 per cent rise in housing and bridging loans to S$191.52 billion from S$191.1 billion previously.