Personal Loans Increases Sharply in First Ten MonthsIndividual consumption loans provided by Chinese banks increased significantly in the first ten months this year, accounting for more than 40 percent of the total lending increase in the period.Chinese banks have extended a total of 194.9 billion yuan (about US$23.53 billion) in personal loans during the period, up 124.6 billion yuan (about US$15.04 billion) from the same period of last year. The People's Bank of China, the central bank, said that Chinese consumers are becoming more comfortable with borrowing money even though there are still chunks of money sitting idle in Chinese personal savings accounts. Statistics provided by the Bank of China indicated that commercial banks' loans to both individuals and institutions have climbed 14.5 percent to reach 9.671 trillion yuan (US$1.167 trillion). "In general, there has been a shift in personal loans from short-term to medium- and long term," the paper said. Most personal loans were individual housing loans, education assistance loans and individual consumption loans for the purchase of large durable products. Experts commented that the restructuring of the lending sector will help the commercial banks to stave off possible financial risks by largely eliminating the occurrence of bad loans. |
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