China's commercial banks further reduced their non-performing
loans (NPLs) last year, according to statistics from the China
Banking Regulatory Commission.
NPLs for all commercial banks in China stood at 1.25 trillion
yuan by the end of 2006, 60 billion yuan lower than a year ago.
The bad loan ratio was 7.09 percent, compared with 8.61 percent
at the end of 2005.
The combined NPLs of the four State commercial banks were 1.05
trillion yuan, 9.22 percent of their total lending, at the end of
last year.
The NPL ratio for the four banks was 10.49 percent a year
ago.
Twelve joint-stock commercial banks had total outstanding bad
loans of 116.8 billion yuan, 30.5 billion yuan lower than at the
end of 2005. The NPL ratio of joint-stock banks fell 1.41
percentage points to 2.81 percent.
Statistics from the banking regulator also showed that the
assets and liabilities of the country's financial institutions rose
rapidly last year.
The total assets of financial institutions, including foreign
ones operating in China, grew by 17.3 percent on a yearly basis to
43.9 trillion yuan at the end of 2006.
Their total liabilities stood at 41.7 trillion yuan, up 16.5
percent on the previous year.
The total assets of China's four State commercial banks rose by
14.7 percent on 2005 to 22.5 trillion yuan at the end of 2006, or
51.3 percent of all financial institutions' assets.
Their total liabilities grew by 13.3 percent to 21.3 trillion
yuan.
The joint-stock banks had total assets of 7.1 trillion yuan, up
22.9 percent over the previous year, or 16.2 percent of all
financial institutions' assets.
Their total liabilities grew by 22.5 percent on the previous
year to 6.9 trillion yuan at the end of 2006.
(China Daily February 14, 2007)