FESTIVE ART: A worker dries handmade lanterns in Putian, east China's Fujian Province, on January 14. With complicated production procedures, the lanterns, sold for 10 yuan ($1.7) each, can be used for many years (LIN JIANBING)

Probe Continues

China's anti-trust probe against Swedish firm Tetra Pak has not stopped, the State Administration for Industry and Commerce (SAIC) said on January 15.

The investigation of the food processing and packaging company's possible abuse of market dominance is still underway, a SAIC spokesman said at a press conference.

Finance.ifeng.com, a Hong Kong media outlet, reported earlier that the SAIC had stopped the probe of Tetra Pak two months after the investigation began with little progress made.

In July, the SAIC enlisted more than 20 provincial and municipal industry and commerce agencies to look into Tetra Pak, and the probe made progress in December, according to Zhang Mao, SAIC Director.

Tetra Pak, which entered China in 1979, has a research and development center in Shanghai and packaging facilities in four Chinese cities, including Beijing. The company processes and packages liquid dairy products as well as other beverages.

Lending Moderated

New data has shown that China's lending in 2013 was moderated and the growth of broad money supply eased, triggering forecasts that credit tapering will continue in 2014.

China's new yuan-denominated lending stood at 8.89 trillion yuan ($1.5 trillion) in 2013, up 687.9 billion yuan ($113.6 billion) from the previous year, said Sheng Songcheng, head of the Statistics Department at the People's Bank of China, the country's central bank, on January 15.

Total social financing, a measure of funds raised by entities in the real economy and a broad measure of liquidity in the economy, hit a record high of 17.29 trillion yuan ($2.9 trillion) last year, up 1.53 trillion yuan ($252.8 billion) year on year.

New yuan lending accounted for about 51.4 percent of total social financing, the lowest proportion in history and 0.6 percentage points lower than 2012.

The narrow measure of money supply (M1), which covers cash in circulation plus current corporate deposits, rose 9.3 percent from the year earlier period to 33.73 trillion yuan ($5.6 trillion).

The broad measure of money supply (M2), which covers cash in circulation and all deposits, jumped 13.6 percent to 110.65 trillion yuan ($18.3 trillion) in 2013, 0.2 percentage points less than in 2012, Sheng said.

Outstanding cash in circulation (M0) amounted to 5.86 trillion yuan ($968.1 billion), up 7.1 percent from 2012.

"The moderation in M2 and credit growth is in line with our view that credit tapering will continue in 2014," said Zhu Haibin, J.P. Morgan China Chief Economist.

Sheng said 2014 will see the central bank continue to implement a prudent monetary policy, make appropriate preemptive adjustments, and use various liquidity management tools to make monetary conditions "not too tight nor too loose."

China has kept a proactive fiscal policy since late 2008, when the country unveiled a 4-trillion-yuan ($566 billion) stimulus package to cushion the impact of the global financial crisis. Its monetary policy has been prudent since late 2010.