BEIJING — China's new yuan-denominated loans hit 992.7 billion yuan (about $142.4 billion) in July, down 63.1 billion yuan compared with the same month of last year, data from the central bank showed on Aug 11.

Loans in the household sector and the corporate sector last month increased by 757.8 billion yuan and 264.5 billion yuan, respectively, with medium and long-term loans accounting for the majority, according to data from the People's Bank of China.

The M2, a broad measure of money supply that covers cash in circulation and all deposits, rose 10.7 percent year on year to 212.55 trillion yuan at the end of July.

The growth rate was 0.4 percentage points lower than that at the end of June, but up 2.6 percentage points compared with that in the same period last year.

Wen Bin, chief analyst at China Minsheng Bank, said that the slowdown was evidence that China's monetary policy is shifting from quantitative easing to structural optimization.

The narrow measure of the money supply (M1), which covers cash in circulation plus demand deposits, stood at 59.12 trillion yuan by the end of July, up 6.9 percent from a year ago.

The growth rate has reached a new high since May 2018, indicating an uptick in corporate capital utilization activities and continued improvement in the economic recovery, Wen noted.

M0, the amount of cash in circulation, rose 9.9 percent year-on-year to 7.99 trillion yuan by the end of last month.

Newly-added social financing, a measurement of funds the real economy receives from the financial system, came in at 1.69 trillion yuan in July, up 406.8 billion yuan year-on-year.

By the end of July, total social financing reached 273.33 trillion yuan, up 12.9 percent year-on-year.

Meanwhile, outstanding social financing increased by 12.9 percent year-on-year to 273.33 trillion yuan, with outstanding yuan-denominated loans to the real economy jumping by 13.3 percent to 164.92 trillion yuan, the data showed.

In July, net financing via corporate bonds edged down 56.1 billion yuan from a year ago to reach 238.3 billion yuan, while non-financial firms' stock financing from the mainland markets went up 62.2 billion yuan from a year ago to 121.5 billion yuan.

As the domestic situation of epidemic prevention and control improves, with the economy showing positive rebounds, more targeted measures are being stressed in monetary policy to maintain a moderate and reasonable growth in the total amount of finance, according to Wen.

"This is not only beneficial for the real economy, but also conducive to preventing and resolving financial risks," Wen said.

The country will use a variety of tools, such as required reserve ratio reductions, interest rate cuts, and re-lending, to enable M2 money supply and aggregate financing to grow at notably higher rates than last year, according to this year's government work report.