Former central bank official :Less financial bubbles in Q3

Wu Xiaoling, a former deputy governor at the People's Bank of China, the central bank, said Saturday that the decline in China's social financing in the third quarter suggests less financial bubbles and better financial order. China's social financing, a broad measure of funds raised by entities in the real economy, shrank 1.26 trillion yuan (194 billion U.S. dollars) from a year earlier to 9.8 trillion yuan in the first three quarters, according to the central bank. The decline in third-quarter social financing was a result of slower growth in bank acceptance bills, said Wu, who regarded the reduced amount as "financial bubbles." According to Wu, growth in bank acceptance bills has dropped by 940.2 billion yuan from a year earlier, she said. Chinese banks have cut bank acceptance bills after the central bank increased the deposits that lenders must keep in reserve in late August, Wu said. But for the real economy, the decline in financing was not significant, she said, citing an increase of more than 700 billion yuan in external loans and entrust loans in the third quarter. China aims to set this year's social financing amount at around 14 trillion yuan, the central bank said in April. The figure was less than the 14.27 trillion yuan in 2010. China needs to remove regulatory restrictions and develop an asset management market in order to boost its financial market, Wu added. According to Wu, the monitoring of the social financing scale is also an important way to prevent risks from "shadow banking," which are non-banking financial institutions that function like commercial banks, including insurers, mutual funds and private equity funds.