China's major commercial banks reduced their non-performing loans (NPL) by billions of US dollars last year, according to statistics released by the China Banking Regulatory Commission on Thursday night.

Data from the industry watchdog show the non-performing loans of the four state-owned commercial banks, and 12 joint-stock commercial banks, stood at 1,170.2 billion yuan (US$150.4 billion), a decrease of 49.4 billion yuan (US$6.3 billion) from the level at the beginning of the year.

The ratio of NPL loans of all the banks dropped by 1.38 percentage points to 7.51 percent.

The NPLs of the state owned Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Construction Bank of China, Bank of China and the Agricultural Bank of China, dropped by 18.8 billion yuan (US$2.4 billion) to 1,053.5 billion yuan (US$135.4 billion), with the NPLs down by 1.26 percentage points to 9.22 percent.

The 12 joint-stock commercial banks saw their combined NPLs shrink 30.6 billion yuan (US$3.9 billion) to 116.7 billion yuan (US$15 billion), with the NPL ratio down 1.42 percentage points to 2.81 percent.

(Xinhua News Agency January 19, 2007)