China's new yuan-denominated loans totaled 3.58 trillion yuan (about $556.3 billion) in January, an increase of 225.2 billion yuan year on year, hitting a record high, central bank data showed Tuesday.

Analysts polled by Reuters had predicted new yuan loans would leap to 3.5 trillion yuan in January, up from 1.26 trillion yuan the previous month.

The M2, a broad measure of money supply that covers cash in circulation and all deposits, rose by 9.4 percent year on year to 221.3 trillion yuan at the end of January, according to the People's Bank of China (PBOC). That was below the estimate of 10-percent growth in the Reuters poll.

The M2 growth was 0.7 percentage points lower than that at the end of December but was 1 percentage point higher than the same period of the year before.

The M1, a narrow measure of money supply that includes cash and short-term deposits, grew by 14.7 percent year on year to 62.56 trillion yuan at the end of January. The growth was 6.1 percentage points higher than that at the end of December.

M0, the amount of cash in circulation, fell by 3.9 percent year on year to 8.96 trillion yuan by the end of last month.

The central bank injected 531 billion yuan of net cash into the market in January, PBOC data showed.

Meanwhile, the annual growth of outstanding total social financing (TSF), a broad measure of credit and liquidity in the economy, slowed to a six-month low of 13 percent in January from 13.3 percent in December.

In January, TSF rose to 5.17 trillion yuan from 1.72 trillion yuan in December.

UBS said in a report it expected annual TSF growth to slow further to 10.8 percent at the end of 2021.

(With input from Xinhua News Agency and Reuters )