(Bloomberg) -- China’s credit growth rose more than expected in March after a slowdown during the Lunar New Year, signaling a further firming of the nascent economic recovery.

• Aggregate financing was 2.86 trillion yuan ($426 billion) last month, compared with about 700 billion yuan in February, the People’s Bank of China said Friday. The median estimate was 1.85 trillion yuan in a Bloomberg survey.

Key Insights

• Financial institutions offered 1.69 trillion yuan of new loans in the month, versus a projected 1.25 trillion yuan
• Broad M2 money supply increased 8.6 percent, the fastest pace since February 2018
• Adjusted aggregate financing growth will “continue improving in the rest of 2019, as more of the easing policies get implemented,” Wang Tao, chief China economist at UBS Group AG in Hong Kong wrote in a report

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• The PBOC said it expects the growth of outstanding aggregate financing to be similar to the pace of nominal gross domestic product growth, which last year came in just under 10 percent.

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