Central bank finds 85.8% urban residents prefer depositing

Photo taken on March 3, 2011 shows citizens select vegetables at a supermarket in Guangzhou, capital of south China's Guangdong Province. The People's Bank of China (PBOC), or the central bank, found in a quarterly survey released Wednesday that 85.8 percent of urban residents preferred depositing more money in banks, with the willingness to "consume more" falling to 14.2 percent, the lowest since 1999. The PBOC survey, carried out among 20,000 urban bank depositors in major 50 cities, shows the first-quarter "future price expectations index" dropped to 72.8 percent, down 8.9 percentage points from the previous quarter. (Xinhua/Lu Hanxin)