国际英语新闻：New lending slows on gov't curbs

The fresh credit for the first three months is about half of the record 4.58 trillion yuan disbursed by Chinese banks a year ago, when the economy took a hard hit from the global financial crisis.

The average monthly new loans in the first quarter stood at around 860 billion yuan, compared with 444.2 billion yuan and 1.5 trillion yuan during the same periods of 2008 and 2009.

"The pace of credit growth will gradually return to normal as the record money supply from a year back would help shore up the Chinese economy effectively," a source at the nation's banking regulator said.

The country's M2, or the broad measure for money supply that includes cash and all types of deposits, grew 22.5 percent year-on-year in March, down from 25.5 percent year-on-year growth in February, the central bank said in the statement.

The Chinese government has set the money growth rate at 17 percent this year, while the four biggest State-owned lenders, which usually account for some 40 percent of the total new loans annually, have targeted credit expansion at roughly 17 percent in 2010.