Ruan Jianhong:
I will answer the second question. According to the depositor survey conducted by the PBC in the second quarter, 58.3% of people surveyed preferred more savings deposits, up 3.6 percentage points from the previous quarter. Meanwhile, 17.9% were inclined to make more investment, down 3.7 percentage points from the previous quarter. The marginal rise in people's willingness to save and the decrease in their willingness to invest was mainly due to the resurgent COVID-19 cases in some parts of China and the increase in people's preference for liquidity. In the meantime, greater volatility in the capital market has lowered people's risk appetite. It is expected that as the pandemic's impact further eases, people's willingness to invest will gradually recover, and their willingness to consume will steadily pick up.
Since the start of this year, household deposits in China, actually not only household deposits but also including enterprise deposits, have seen a significant increase, with deposit interest rates dropping slightly. At the end of June, household deposits stood at 112.8 trillion yuan, up 10.3 trillion yuan from the beginning of this year, which was an increase of 2.9 trillion yuan over the same period of the previous year. Enterprises deposits were 74.9 trillion yuan, rising by 5.3 trillion yuan from the beginning of this year, which was an increase of 3.1 trillion yuan compared to the figure of the same period of the previous year. Financial institutions have increased support for the real economy through loans, bond investments, and other forms, and the corresponding derivative deposits have increased. In addition, in the first half of the year, China issued VAT credit refunds on a large scale, increasing the deposits in the real sector of the economy.
In June, the interest rates on newly absorbed time deposits dropped significantly to 2.5%, down 16 basis points year on year. The drop in deposit rates is conducive to enhancing financial support for the real economy, including the sustainability of consumption growth.
In the future, both household and enterprise deposits are expected to grow steadily. At the same time, the PBC will continue to deepen reforms to strengthen the market's role in setting interest rates, improve the market-based interest rate mechanism and the transmission mechanism, as well as the central bank's policy interest rate system to promote a reduction in overall financing costs of enterprises. Thank you.
