Outstanding loans to five industries in China that have major overcapacity were up only 0.1 percent year-on-year in the first quarter, a top official from China's banking regulator said Sunday, the Xinhua News Agency reported.
Guo Ligen, vice chairman of the China Banking Regulatory Commission, also said that overall risk in the banking industry is under control and banks should continue to boost lending to strategic and emerging industries.
Regulators have increasingly targeted overcapacity in heavy industry in recent months, and lenders have grown wary of sectors like coal and steel following a string of defaults.
Although bank lending hit record highs in the first quarter, Chinese regions with heavy dependence on these industries actually saw a sharp drop in bank lending and rising utilization of expensive non-bank "shadow finance," a recent Reuters analysis of central bank data showed.
At the end of the first quarter, the overall nonperforming loan ratio was 1.75 percent, according to Xinhua.
