中国大型银行不良贷款快速上升

Bad loans at China’s biggest banks rose at the fastest pace in at least seven years during the third quarter as a slowing economy squeezed corporate borrowers. Analysts said the fall in asset quality was manageable.

随着中国经济放缓令企业借款人承压，中国各大银行第三季度的不良贷款大幅增长，增速达到至少7年来的最高水平。但分析师们表示，资产质量下降仍然可控。

Industrial & Commercial Bank of China and China Construction Bank, the country’s two biggest banks by assets, reported their biggest quarterly jump in bad loans in at least seven years, with rises of 9 and 10 per cent respectively.

中国工商银行(ICBC)和中国建设银行(CCB)发布的季报显示，两家银行第三季度不良贷款分别增长9%和10%，是至少7年来的最大增幅。按资产计算，工行和建行是中国最大的两家银行。

Analysts warned against misinterpreting the rise at the two banks. “The market might be over-concerned with ICBC and CCB’s nonperforming loans,” said Dorris Chen, China financial institutions analyst at Standard Chartered. “NPLs rose because these banks are reluctant to sell them to distressed asset managers. It doesn’t indicate a bigger underlying problem with asset quality.”

但分析师表示，不应误读这两家银行不良贷款的增长。渣打银行(Standard Chartered)的中国金融机构分析师陈睆明(Dorris Chen)表示：“市场很可能对工行和建行的不良贷款过于担忧了。不良贷款之所以上升，是因为这些银行不愿将它们出售给不良资产管理公司。它并不意味着资产质量出现了更严重的根本问题。”

Data from the central bank this week showed that lenders have trimmed their exposure to China’s troubled property sector. Loans to home buyers and developers fell 5 per cent in the third quarter from the same period a year earlier.

中国央行本周发布的数据显示，银行已经削减了它们在陷入困境的房地产领域的敞口。第三季度发放给购房者和开发商的贷款同比下降了5%。

Many lenders have been aggressively selling or writing off bad loans this year, but the biggest banks are opting to try to keep bad loans in-house in the hope of recovering at least some of the value for themselves.

许多银行今年大举出售或核销不良贷款，但最大的几家银行选择努力将不良贷款留在本行，寄望于至少能够回收一些价值。

Agricultural Bank of China has the highest bad-loan ratio among the big five banks at 1.29 per cent as of the end of September, while that of Bank of China, the country’s fourth-largest lender, was the lowest at 1.06 per cent.

中国农业银行(ABC)在今年9月末的不良贷款率高达1.29%，是中国5大银行里最高的，中国第四大银行中国银行(BOC)的不良贷款率为1.07%。

Analysts say that while the reported rise in bad loans is not cause for concern, the bigger risk is that such figures fail to reflect the true extent of delinquencies. Banks can disguise overdue loans by rolling over or extending them.

分析师表示，尽管不用担心不良贷款的上升，但更大的风险在于，此类数据是否真实反映出了逾期贷款的真实水平。银行可以通过贷款滚转或延期来掩盖逾期贷款。

But in a bright spot for the banks, net interest margins – a measure of the spread between what banks pay for deposits and what they charge for loans – have held up better than many analysts expected.

但这些银行数据中的一个亮点是，净息差（贷款产生的利息收入与为存款支付的利息之差）依然高于许多分析师的预期。

CCB’s net interest margin was unchanged at 2.80 per cent, while at Agricultural Bank of China, it dipped slightly to 2.91 per cent from 2.93 per cent three months earlier. But it remained comfortably above the levels of 2012 and 2013.

建行的净息差维持2.80%不变，农行从3个月前的2.93%略降至2.91%，但这依然远高于2012年和2013年的水平。

Central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan said in March that the longstanding cap on bank deposit interest rates is likely to be phased out in two years. Such reforms are expected to squeeze bank margins as lenders are forced to compete for customer funds by offering higher deposit rates.

中国央行行长周小川在今年3月表示，可能在两年内取消实施已久的银行存款利率上限。预计此类改革将会挤压银行业的利润率，因为银行将不得不通过提高存款利率来争抢客户资金。

But many analysts believe the slowing economy will force policy makers to extend that timeline in order to prevent rising deposit rates from feeding through to higher lending costs, creating another drag on an economy that is already slowing.

但许多分析师认为，经济放缓将迫使政策制定者延迟取消上限，以免存款利率上升传导至贷款成本，导致后者上升，从而进一步拖累业已放缓的经济。

China’s economy grew at a 7.3 per cent annual pace in the third quarter, down from 7.5 per cent in the second quarter and the slowest pace in five years.

中国经济在第三季度的同比增速为7.3%，低于二季度的7.5%，创下5年来的最低增速。

The central bank has also taken a series of targeted easing measures this year. Last month it injected Rmb500bn into the banking system via loans to the big banks. It followed up this month with an additional Rmb200bn in loans to midsize lenders. That has helped lower funding costs for banks.

中国央行今年还采取了一系列定向宽松措施。上月，它通过向大银行发放贷款，向银行体系注入5000亿元人民币。本月，它进一步向中等规模银行注入2000亿元人民币的流动性。这帮助银行降低了资金成本。

On the lending side, meanwhile, rates have remained relatively high as banks, wary of the slowing economy, demand higher interest rates to compensate for the increased default risk.

与此同时，银行由于担心经济放缓而提高了贷款利率来补偿违约风险的上升，使得贷款利率依然保持相对高位。

At the same time, a regulatory crackdown on off-balance-sheet credit from trust companies and other non-bank lenders has driven some weaker borrowers back to traditional banks. That has helped prop up lending rates.

同时，监管机构对信托公司和其他非银行贷款机构的表外信贷的打击，导致一些实力较弱的借款者重新回到传统银行。这也帮助推升了贷款利率。