SINGAPORE, Jan. 31 (Xinhua) -- Singapore's total loans and advances including bills financing of Domestic Banking Units (DBU) declined 0.27 percent month-on-month in December, to a predicted 651.93 billion Singapore dollars.

This reversed from a 0.64-percent month-on-month gain in November.

Meanwhile, the figure grew 5.6 percent as against December 2016, marking the 15th straight month of year-on-year growth, but the growth rate was lower than that of 7.06 percent in November 2017.

In December, DBU's loans to businesses grew 6.17 percent year-on-year but declined 0.75 percent month-on-month, to 389.65 billion dollars. In a breakdown, the loans to building and construction reached 120.39 billion dollars, falling 0.82 percent year-on-year and accounting for about 30.9 percent of the total business loans.

DBU's consumer loans in December reached 262.28 billion dollars, up 4.77 percent year-on-year and 0.45 percent month-on-month.