| Balance sheets of Chinese banks show improvement |
Aug. 22, 2006 ¨C Non-performing loan (NPL) ratios of Chinese banks have shown an improvement over the first six months of this year with the ratio of the country¡¯s banking sector down 1.1 percentage points from the beginning of the year to 7.53%.
As at Jun. 30, 2006, the total amount of NPLs for China¡¯s banks stood at RMB 1.28 trillion, RMB 43.5 billion less than the amount registered at the beginning of this year, according to recently-released figures from the China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC).
Although the CBRC has not systematically publicized NPL provision figures, the latest figures reveal that the four State-owned commercial banks and 12 joint-stock commercial banks had, as of Jun. 30, 2006, allocated RMB 302.5 billion as NPL provisions, RMB 130.2 billion less than figures at the beginning of this year.
The CBRC also stated that out of the 16 banks, 12 of them have an NPL provision ratio above 100%. However, the names of the banks were not provided.
As at the end of June this year, there were 55 banks with a capital adequacy ratio above 8% compared to 53 at the beginning of the year.
China has also stepped up its efforts to curb crimes in the banking sector - in the first half of 2006, 480 economic crimes were exposed, 89 cases fewer when compared to the same period last year.
Out of the 480 cases, 134 cases involved sums of money above RMB 1 million, 26 cases lesser than last year. More than 68% cases were spotted through an internal audit system, 1.8 percentage points higher than last year.
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