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'Big Four' banks halt issuing credit

2010-11-15 16:10

China's four biggest State-owned commercial banks will not issue any fresh loans to developers before the end of the year, China Real Estate Business reported Sunday, citing banking sources.

The four big banks, Bank of China, Agricultural Bank of China, China Construction Bank, and Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, had met their loan-issuing budgets for 2010, with developers forced to tighten their belts before next year's budgets come out, the report said.

"We've been compiling an annual summary report these days, so it is impossible to extend new loans," said an executive in charge of credit issuing at the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, the report said.

"The four big banks suspended the approval of development loans as of October," said an analyst of China Life Asset Management Company.

An executive of the credit department at Bank of China (BOC) told the newspaper that the branch banks of BOC used up their full-year credit quotas in the first three quarters. He added that the money supply and credit aggregate for 2011 will not surpass this year's amount, and control measures on the real estate market will continue.

Lu Zhengwei, chief economist of Industrial Bank, estimated that China will issue less than seven trillion yuan ($1.04 trillion) of credit and loans in 2011, the report said.

China's new local-currency lending was 587.7 billion yuan in October, according to a report issued by the People's Bank of China, the central bank. M2, the broadest measure of money supply, rose 19.3 percent from a year earlier, Bloomberg News reported Sunday citing the central bank.

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