Money market funds’ growth poses headache for China’s central bank

CHINA’S ever-growing money market funds pose an increasing problem for the nation’s central bank as policy makers attempt to boost the flow of credit to cushion an economic slowdown.

While the funds have offered savers a handy alternative to risky stocks and once highflying wealth management products, they’re effectively raising borrowing costs. That’s because, with some 8.6 trillion yuan ($1.3 trillion) according to the Asset Management Association of China, they’re sapping the flow of savings to banks, which in turn are having to pay the funds higher rates when taking their cash as deposits.

Those higher costs are being passed along to borrowers, countering the efforts of the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) to reduce lending rates for small- and medium-sized companies in particular. And the bargaining power of money funds is growing — the assets are close to the personal deposits at Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd., the world’s largest lender by assets.

“Investors’ risk tolerance has been falling amid weak stock and bond market performances,” so they’ve been turning to money-market funds, said Nie Wen, a Shanghai-based economist at Huabao Trust Co. “The money market funds’ investments may not necessarily end up in the hands of medium and small enterprises.”

FINANCIAL REPRESSION

It was a lot simpler years ago, when Chinese households had few options other than bank deposits and regulators set the rates on those savings pools. That allowed the PBoC to easily cut funding costs for banks; the central bank also set the lending rate.

“While policy makers only needed to focus on the banking system to boost lenders’ willingness to loan, they now face bigger challenges and need more measures to achieve the same goal, given the size of such funds,” said Xia Le, Hong Kong-based chief Asia economist at Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria SA.