Credit growth slow and steady CREDIT growth has risen at much the same plodding pace as the previous few years. The latest figures from the Reserve Bank of Australia will not give the central bank any reason to budge from its "wait-and-see with a bias to ease" stance on monetary policy. The Australian finance sector's loans to the private sector rose by 0.3 per cent in September, the same as in August. It was also the same as the average for the past three years. Within the total, credit for housing has notched up a 0.4 per cent rise every month this year. That, too, was right on its three-year average. Other personal credit increased by 0.3 per cent, which was more than its three-year average of zero growth. But with personal credit in September only one per cent higher than a year earlier, its growth rate has plenty of room to accelerate before anyone might consider it excessive. It's much the same with business credit. The fall of 0.1 per cent looks fairly weak, but it's not much of a departure from its three-year average - a monthly rise of the same tiny margin. With so much attention right now on the housing market, where there are fears - not shared by the Reserve Bank of Australia - of an unsustainable price boom (or bubble, the more popular term), it's worth noting a significant caveat with these figures. The housing loan numbers don't include loans made offshore to investors in the Australian housing market. That exclusion applies not just to foreign banks and other financiers, but also to the offshore branches of Australian banks. The RBA does not appear to think that gap in the data makes much difference. And its focus is on the stability of the Australia financial system, which does not include the standalone balance sheets of those distant outposts of local banks. Even so, it's likely that foreign money is adding some heat to the local market even if it is not showing up in the RBA credit or Australian Bureau of Statistics housing finance data.