China's four asset management companies (AMCs) disposed of 587.6 billion yuan (US$70.8 billion) of bad assets and recovered 120.2 billion yuan (US$14.5 billion) in cash during the first nine months of this year, the China Banking Regulatory Commission said yesterday.

China Huarong disposed of 174.6 billion yuan (US$21.0 billion) and recovered 35.5 billion yuan (US$4.3 billion) in cash, while China Great Wall handled 183.2 billion yuan (US$22.1 billion) and retrieved 19.3 billion yuan (US$2.3 billion), the commission said.

China Orient disposed of 96.7 billion yuan (US$11.6 billion) and recovered 21.2 billion yuan (US$2.6 billion), while China Cinda disposed of 133.1 billion yuan (US$16.0 billion) and recovered 44.2 billion yuan (US$5.3 billion), it said.

China Great Wall announced on Monday that it will sell the remainder of the company's 150 billion yuan (US$18.1 billion) assets to both domestic and foreign investors in one package or several packages, in order to accelerate the disposal of its bad assets.

The four asset management companies were created in 1999 to take over a total of 1.4 trillion yuan (US$168 billion) of bad assets from the country's "Big Four" State-owned banks the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, China Construction Bank, Bank of China and the Agricultural Bank of China.

Asset management company officials have claimed their business performance was comparable with foreign counterparts.

However, they have long been dogged by accusations of inefficiency and undervaluing the assets they sell.

The increasingly direct involvement of commercial banks in the bad assets market has cast further gloom over the future of asset management companies as the nation's specialized bad assets managers, analysts said.

But CBRC Chairman Liu Mingkang said earlier this year that although asset management companies are experiencing some problems in their systems and operational mechanisms, their level of professionalism has been improving continuously, and their disposal work had been fairly smooth.

While confirming the asset management companies' achievement, a CBRC spokesman said on Monday that the commission would continue to improve its supervision of commercial banks and try to reduce both outstanding bad assets and bad assets ratios in coming months.

"The absolute amount of bad assets in the four State-owned banks was still very big," the spokesman said.

The task of reducing these outstanding bad assets and the bad assets ratios at major banks has also became increasingly difficult as the loans to some suspended or cancelled projects would create a new batch of bad loans.

The central government imposed tight credit curbs and land controls this year on overheated sectors such as steel, cement and aluminium, trying to slow down rapid growth in fixed asset investment and bank loans starting from the second half of last year.

A big number of steel and cement plants as well as many other fixed asset projects such as economic development zones and shopping malls have reportedly been ordered to stop construction.

Economists have expressed concern that such administrative measures will not solve the problem, although they had some immediate impact on slowing down fixed asset investment and bank loans.

(China Daily October 20, 2004)