* What: Chinese February economic indicators
* When: March 10-15, starting with CPI and PPI on Tuesday
* Money supply growth accelerates; consumer prices drop
By Jason Subler and Aileen Wang
BEIJING, March 6 (Reuters) - China continued to witness a huge injection of cash into its economy in February, but signs that a recovery is underway are tentative at best, according to a Reuters poll.
The median forecast of 26 economists polled by Reuters is for annual growth in the broad M2 measure of money supply to have accelerated to 19.2 percent in February from 18.8 percent in January, as banks did Beijing's bidding and extended credit in support of its stimulus measures.
Exports, a key driver of the economy, are expected to have fallen 5 percent from a year earlier in February, much less sharply than the 17.5 percent drop a month earlier.
But the wide range of forecasts for export growth -- from negative 46 percent to a rise of 19 percent -- underlines the extent to which February's figures, and any assessment of whether the economy is recovering, will be clouded by seasonal factors.
The week-long Lunar New Year holiday fell in January this year but February last year, making comparisons difficult.
"(The) Q1 economic outlook remains challenging with the external demand still falling, property in the doldrums and commodity restocking effects probably exhausted," Isaac Meng with BNP Paribas in Beijing said in a research note.
China's economy grew 6.8 percent in the fourth quarter compared with the same period a year earlier, weighing down 2008 growth to a seven-year low of 9.0 percent.
Following are forecasts from 26 economists polled by Reuters for the main indicators for February (expressed as percentage change from a year earlier; trade balance in billions of dollars):
Due Median Range Pvs Yr ago PPI Mar 10 -4.2 -5.0/-1.5 -3.3 6.6 CPI Mar 10 -1.6 -3.5/0.9 1.0 8.7 Trade balance~ Mar 11 27.3 -2.0/40.1 39.1 8.6 Exports Mar 11 -5.0 -46.0/19.0 -17.5 6.5 Imports Mar 11 -25.0 -46.0/-3.0 -43.1 35.1 Fixed investment* Mar 11 21.5 10.3/27.0 26.1 24.3 Industrial output* Mar 12 6.4 3.5/8.0 5.7 15.4 Retail Sales* Mar 12 16.5 12.0/21.2 19.0 20.2 M2 money supply Mar 9-15 19.2 18.0/21.8 18.8 17.5 Yuan loans Mar 9-15 22.3 19.0/24.0 21.3 15.7
Notes:
* Forecasts for fixed-asset investment, industrial output and retail sales are for January-February; previous figures for IP and retail sales are for December, and for FAI, for Jan-Dec.
~ Trade due on March 11, but could come earlier;
Not all economists gave forecasts for each indicator.
UPTICK IN OUTPUT
Im an effort to smooth out the new year distortions, the National Bureau of Statistics will issue combined January-February figures for urban fixed-asset investment, industrial output and retail sales.
Economists expect factory output to rise 6.4 percent in January and February from a year earlier, picking up a touch from the 5.7 percent pace seen in December 2008.
Consumers are expected to have tightened their belts, however, with annual growth in retail sales seen falling to 16.5 percent in the first two months of the year, from 19.0 percent in December.
One significant development will likely be the outright fall in the consumer price index (CPI). Economists see it down 1.6 percent from a year earlier -- the first negative reading since December 2002 and the deepest fall since June 1999.
But such a figure would be in part the result of a high base effect, as huge snowstorms early last year drove up the prices of food and other goods. The CPI spiked at 8.7 percent in February 2008, settling into a downward trend thereafter.
Domestic media and officials have already hinted at some of the figures.
Liu Mingkang, head of the China Banking Regulatory Commission, said new yuan lending probably exceeded 800 billion yuan ($117 billion) in February -- far less than the 1.6 trillion yuan in January but still a high figure.
The 21st Century Business Herald reported on Friday that both exports and imports fell by more than 20 percent from a year earlier in February, saying the resulting trade surplus could be just $7 billion, the smallest surplus since February 2006 and only a fourth the surplus expected by economists. (Reporting by Jason Subler, Aileen Wang and Chen Min; Editing by Jan Dahinten)