It is understood that the deposit reserve ratio is one of the three traditional monetary policy tools and is generally regarded as a "powerful medicine" for currency regulation. However, since last year, in the face of the growing liquidity of the banking system, the central bank has clearly stated that raising the deposit reserve ratio is a "fine-tuning" policy. With the increasingly prominent problem of excess liquidity in recent years, the central bank has frequently used this monetary tool since 2006, which is the eighth time that the central bank raised the deposit reserve ratio this year. The last time the central bank raised the deposit reserve ratio was on September 25th. Comparing the recent increases, we can find that the frequency of raising the deposit reserve ratio by the central bank is gradually accelerating.
After all, raising the reserve ratio is an important step in macro-control. What really worries the market is whether the central bank will introduce a rate hike policy in the short term. Some analysts believe that although the speed and time of raising the reserve ratio are somewhat unexpected, before the National Day holiday, the central bank has already thrown out a "signal bomb"-in the resolution of the third quarter regular meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee released on September 28, the central bank believes that we should continue to implement a prudent and moderately tight monetary policy, appropriately increase policy regulation and control, and maintain a reasonable growth of money and credit. The purpose of raising the deposit reserve ratio this time is to strengthen the management of liquidity in the banking system and curb the excessive growth of money and credit. In the opinion of analysts, the macroeconomic data has just been released in September (at present, only the central bank has released the third quarter monetary operation report), and the central bank has taken action in advance to raise the deposit reserve to a historical high, which is likely to mean that after the macroeconomic data are released one after another, more stringent control measures will be introduced.
Corresponding to the increase in the deposit reserve ratio, it is the expectation that the CPI index will still run at a high level in September. After the CPI (Consumer Price Index) hit a new high of nearly 1 1 year with an increase of 6.5% in August, domestic research institutions had expected the trend of CPI in September. Many research institutions believe that the CPI increase in September will still run at a high level of around 6%. Research institutions pointed out that the CPI index is still running at a high level, the tightening policy is coming to the fore, and the expectation of raising interest rates is also strong.
On June 5438+0 1 day, the central bank issued150 billion directional bills, which is the sixth time that the central bank issued such directional bills this year. Raising interest rates is the "shadow" of each directional bill issuance. Therefore, the market generally believes that the signal of raising interest rates for the sixth time this year is becoming more and more obvious.
The means of regulation will combine many factors.
"Raising the deposit reserve ratio again is mainly to strengthen financial regulation and control and curb the contradiction of excess liquidity." On the night when the People's Bank of China announced that it would raise the deposit reserve ratio for the eighth time this year, Guo Shuqing, the chairman of China Construction Bank, said: "Now the foreign exchange reserves are growing rapidly, and the central bank has to release a large amount of base currency, which is a major reason for the domestic liquidity contradiction." The latest data shows that China's foreign exchange reserves have exceeded $65,438 +0.43 trillion. Market analysts believe that raising the deposit reserve ratio by 0.5 percentage points this time can freeze the funds of the banking system by more than 654.38+080 billion yuan, which will help alleviate the excess liquidity of banks to some extent.
In order to strengthen financial regulation, since the beginning of this year, in addition to raising the deposit reserve ratio eight times, the financial department has also taken a series of measures, including raising interest rates five times, reducing interest tax, and issuing special government bonds.
As China's foreign trade growth is still very strong, the situation of domestic excess liquidity has not been effectively improved at present, and the resulting asset price (stock market and property market) bubble inflation seems to be even more worrying. Guo Shuqing believes that the current macro-control task is mainly to prevent the economy from turning from fast to hot. Since the beginning of this year, the pressure of rising prices has been great, and asset prices have also risen rapidly, which should be highly valued.
Xie Guozhong, the former chief economist of Morgan Stanley Asia, warned that the cumulative increase of China mainland and Hongkong stock markets in recent months was amazing, and there was obviously a bubble, and the bubble situation was even more serious than 1997. The mainland A-share market may face a sharp drop, and the Hong Kong stock market will also be implicated.
In the real estate market, the People's Bank of China and the China Banking Regulatory Commission recently issued a document requesting to increase the down payment ratio of the second home loan, so as to regulate the domestic real estate market and prevent bank risks. After a series of macro-control, such as taxation and interest rate increase, it has become a reality for China to tighten its mortgage in an all-round way. The banking sector believes that this is the most severe on the real estate market in recent years. Liu Ye, chairman of the China Banking Regulatory Commission, said that preventing bank risks and increasing the down payment ratio of mortgage loans are even more targeted than raising the deposit reserve ratio and other financial means.
With the introduction of macroeconomic data in September, some economic data such as real estate are running at a high level, and the deposit reserve ratio has been raised to the highest point in recent years, which fully reflects the overheated macroeconomic operation in China and the unprecedented challenges faced by macroeconomic regulation and control. Repeatedly raising the deposit reserve ratio has reduced the marginal utility of interest rate regulation. Therefore, it is speculated that the tools and means of macro-control in the future will be more diversified, combined and concrete to ensure that the tightening macro-control policies can achieve practical results.
The impact on the banking industry is just negative.
Commercial banks are most affected by raising the deposit reserve ratio. Raising the reserve ratio again has achieved the goal of central bank regulation, but the financial pressure of commercial banks is also a realistic problem. What about the future banks?
Under the market economy system, every adjustment of the deposit reserve ratio will actually freeze or release the liquidity of commercial banks, which is no small matter for commercial banks seeking to maximize profits and shareholders' returns.
Shen, a senior economist at Citigroup in China, predicted that in the case of excess liquidity, the central bank's deposit reserve ratio may be raised four times, with the highest adjustment to 15%. However, if the deposit reserve ratio exceeds 15%, the impact on the bank's capital cost will be enormous. First of all, it will have a certain impact on the operational efficiency of commercial banks. The deposit reserve ratio 13% means that 13% of all deposits absorbed by commercial banks should be frozen to the central bank according to the adjustment date, and the central bank pays interest to commercial banks according to the annual interest rate 1.89%. Since the beginning of this year, the central bank has raised the deposit interest rate five times, and now the deposit interest rate has reached 2.88% in three months and 3.87% in 1 year. The deposit absorbed by commercial banks at such a high interest rate, the reserve interest rate frozen to the central bank is only 1.89%. For commercial banks, the spread between deposits and reserves is seriously upside down, which increases the cost of commercial banks. Secondly, it has an impact on the liquidity of commercial banks. The previous seven increases in the reserve ratio and the issuance of central bank bills have made some commercial banks feel insufficient liquidity and tight position funds. Especially after the new mortgage policy of the central bank, some commercial banks have greatly reduced the scale of housing mortgage loans, and some have stopped lending.
Wu Yonggang, a banking analyst at Guotai Junan, said that although the slight adjustment of the 0.5% deposit reserve ratio has limited impact on the banking industry, the cumulative effect of the policy cannot be ignored, and the impact of monetary tightening on the banking industry has changed from neutral to negative.
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