China's broad measure of money supply, M2, which covers cash in circulation plus all deposits, increased at an annual rate of 18.47 percent to 39.42 trillion yuan by the end of October.

The growth figure was 1.53 percentage points higher than that for last year and 0.02 percentage points higher than that for the first three quarters of 2007, the People's Bank of China (PBOC) said on Monday.

China also saw accelerating growth in newly-added bank loans despite frequent interest rate and reserve requirement ratio increases this year.

The newly-added Renminbi-denominated loans in October hit 136.1 billion yuan, 119.2 billion yuan more than the same month last year.

That raised the newly-added RMB loans in the first 10 months to 3.5 trillion yuan, 1.1 times the figure for last year.

Total RMB loans jumped by 17.66 percent to 26.03 trillion yuan by the end of October. The growth rate was 2.59 percentage points higher than that for last year and 0.53 percentage points higher than that for the first three quarters.

Total RMB bank deposits dropped 449.8 billion yuan to 37.85 trillion yuan by the end of October.

Last October, RMB bank deposits added 152.3 billion yuan.

The decline came as residents transferred more bank deposits to chase initial public offerings on the stock market for higher returns, the PBOC stated.

(Xinhua News Agency November 13, 2007)