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)