The story appears on

Page A11

November 14, 2013

GET this page in PDF

Free for subscribers

View shopping cart

Related News

Home » Business » Finance

Bad loans grow as asset quality worsens

Bad loans in China continued to rise during the third quarter as asset quality deteriorated amid an economic slowdown and a thinner loan profit margin forced lenders to expose a greater portion of their balance sheets to risky small firms.

The outstanding non-performing loans at lenders on China’s mainland rose 24 billion yuan (US$3.9 billion) from the end of June to 563.6 billion yuan at the end of September.

Meanwhile, the bad loan ratio edged up from 0.96 percent to 0.97 percent during the same period, the China Banking Regulatory Commission said yesterday.

Rural commercial lenders had the worst asset quality among the banks, with an average NPL ratio of 1.62 percent. The ratio at foreign banks improved 3 basis points to 0.57 percent to rank top among all mainland lenders again.

“The bad loan ratio climbed during the third quarter despite small and medium banks making more write-offs,” Beijing Gao Hua Securities Co said in a latest report.

Other analysts warned that bad loans will rise further as banks stop giving refinance or payment extension to industries with excessive capacity.  Meanwhile, the growth of credit to small and micro enterprises for higher profit margins will also result in higher credit risk for the lenders.

Net interest margin improved at the top-four lenders while narrowing at most smaller banks, Gao Hua said.

 




 

Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.

沪公网安备 31010602000204号

Email this to your friend