Financial Aggregates April 2003

Total credit provided to the private sector by financial intermediaries rose by 1.2 per cent over April 2003, following a rise of 1.0 per cent over March.  Over the year to April, total credit rose by 12.7 per cent.

M3 increased by 0.8 per cent and broad money rose by 0.8 per cent over April. Over the year to April, M3 increased by 10.8 per cent and broad money rose by 10.6 per cent.

All growth rates for the financial aggregates are seasonally adjusted, and adjusted for the effects of the breaks in series recorded in the footnotes to tables. Figures showing the levels of financial aggregates are not adjusted for series breaks.

Historical levels and growth rates for the financial aggregates have been revised owing to the resubmission of data by financial intermediaries.

Changes to the Calculation of Financial Aggregates

New reporting forms were recently introduced for entities registered under the Financial Sector (Collection of Data) Act 2001; these entities are collectively referred to as Registered Financial Corporations (RFCs). The new forms were designed to modernise the collection of data from RFCs and to improve consistency with statistics collected from other financial institutions. The new forms are more closely aligned to RFCs’ own internal processes, and also provide a more detailed sectoral split of assets and liabilities than previously.

April 2003 data for the financial aggregates are the first to be calculated using the redesigned forms. A similar change in reporting occurred for banks in April 2002 and for credit unions and building societies in October 2001.

As a result of some differences between the old and new reporting forms, the levels of a number of financial aggregates for March and April may not be comparable in the published data. Therefore, growth rates calculated using the published levels can be misleading.

RFCs reported March 2003 data using both the old and new reporting forms, which allows us to assess the effect of the changes on the levels of the financial aggregates and adjust for this in calculating the growth rates. The growth rates published in this Media Release incorporate the necessary adjustments.

Nevertheless, there may be some increased volatility in growth rates as RFCs adjust to the new arrangements.

There are a few other changes to the series that have been incorporated in this release. Bills of exchange accepted or endorsed by non-bank financial intermediaries were previously included in ‘Loan and advances by non-bank financial intermediaries’ and ‘by all financial intermediaries’, but are now included in ‘bills on issue’. The credit series for ‘Other (mainly business)’ has been relabelled ‘Business’ to reflect that under the new reporting forms business credit is no longer derived as a residual; the historical data for this series are unaffected by this change.

Enquiries

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Reserve Bank of Australia
SYDNEY

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