Bank recovers billions of bad assets
( 2003-11-19 21:31) (Xinhua)
The Construction Bank of China (CBC), one of
China's four state-owned commercial banks, posted a 11.84 percent non-performing
loan (NPL) ratio at the end of October, down 4.06 percentage points from the
beginning of this year, according to bank sources.
The ratio was the lowest among the country's four big state- owned commercial
banks and lower than the 12-percent goal set for 2003 early this year, the
sources said.
An accumulated 60.8 billion yuan (7.3 billion dollars) worth of bad assets
had been disposed of by the end of October, with half recovered in cash.
The bank, with its Asset Preservation Department set up in 1996, has actively
explored ways to dispose of and recover its non- performing assets, according to
the sources.
It recovered 5.2 billion yuan (62.6 million dollars) from auctions of
mortgaged assets with a book value of 10.4 billion yuan since 2001.
The bank is also considering a joint venture with Morgan Stanley to dispose
of some 4.3 billion yuan (524 million dollars) of non-performing loans and
recover at least 30 percent of the figure's face value.
The big four - Bank of China, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, CBC
and Agricultural Bank of China - had around two trillion yuan (241.8 billion
dollars) of bad assets to be disposed of by the end of June this year and set a
target of reducing their NPL ratios by three to four percentage points this
year.
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