A subtle tightening tone is expected to dominate China's banking sector in the very near term, with the monthly new credit to be around RMB 500 billion (USD 73 billion) for MAY-JUN09 with no end-quarter credit tick-up expected. This is based on MAY09's loan mix, in terms of: 1) the percentage of discount bill lending out of total new loan has reportedly dipped to 10% in MAY09, down from 32% in 1Q09. 2) majority of quality infrastructure projects have already obtained loan financing and made their investments. As a result, the big four state-owned bank saw their new corporate loans (excluding discount bill) dropped to RMB 60.3 billion (USd 8.9 billion) for MAY09. (ISI-BNP Paribas, 17 pp, 2009/6)