Thursday, May 07, 2009

Is China Transforming Itself In Financial Ponzi?

I read a post at naked capitalism "China Power Generation Falls, Suggesting Talk of Recovery is Premature":
According to the State Grid’s latest statistics, April’s national power generation totaled 274.763 billion kwh, a fall of 3.55%, year on year, and a decline of over 3% from the previous month.
The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology says that in the first three months of this year, China’s power consumption totaled 780.990 kwh, down 4.02%, year on year, and power consumption in March alone totaled 283.389 kwh, down 2.01%....
However, at the same time the credit is growing like mushrooms, more info at WSJ China Journal "Where Is China’s Surge In Bank Credit Going?":
One of the most talked about recent numbers in China’s economy -– the 4.6 trillion yuan (nearly $675 billion) in new bank loans extended in the first quarter –- is also one of the most confusing. It’s clear that a lot of lending has been pushed into the economy, but so far it’s not been that clear where exactly the money is going.
......
The central bank’s breakdown of new medium- and long-term borrowing, the kind most likely to be used to pay for investment, shows that 50.1% went to infrastructure in the first quarter. That clearly reflects how banks are being pressed to give priority to government stimulus projects. But such lending has its own risks. “Recent bank lending has been concentrated in government projects which, while helping drive rapid investment, also requires evaluation of local governments’ ability to repay the debts,” the central bank said.
Outside of stimulus projects, demand for credit is not as strong. Only 7.9% of new medium- and long-term lending went to manufacturing, and 11.2% to real estate development.
On the one hand, the figures could allay worries that the surge in bank lending is financing an increase in excess manufacturing capacity in China. On the other, it shows that many Chinese businesses are still having a tough time.

Contracting power consumption would suggest contracting industrial production, unless moved to energy efficient technologies, due to lower demand? How do they build that infrastructure, e.g., I would expect that concrete production requires quite a lot of power?

Well, is this country going to create GDP growth with excessive credit growth and fancy financial services?



No comments:

Post a Comment