China orders seven banks to cut outstanding loans
BEIJING, Nov 29 (Reuters) - China has ordered seven banks to reduce their outstanding loans and told another group of banks to stay within their loan quotas, the official Shanghai Securities News said on Thursday.
The report cited a circular sent to the banks by regulators aimed at limiting total bank lending this year.
The order was given to China's three policy banks, which lend explicitly at the direction of the government. They are China Development Bank, Agricultural Development Bank and China Export-Import Bank.
The other four banks targeted were Agricultural Bank of China -- one of the country's five biggest banks -- as well as China Everbright Bank, Guangdong Development Bank and Shenzhen Development Bank 00001.SZ, the newspaper said.
It made no mention of the other Big Five lenders but said joint stock banks, a category of smaller institutions such as China Merchants Bank (600036.SS) (3968.HK), should not lend beyond the quota they received at the start of the year.
The quotas, allocated by the banking regulator and the central bank, are usually not rigidly enforced. But this year, the authorities are cracking down harder than usual as the year draws to a close in order to slow lending growth.
China's banks granted 3.5 trillion yuan new loans in the first 10 months, up from 3.18 trillion yuan at the whole of 2006.
For a related story on the impact on the credit hold-down, please double-click on [ID:nPEK236465] (Reporting by Langi Chiang; Editing by Alan Wheatley)
