China’s state-owned firms should control debt investments: regulator

Fred Dufour | AFP | Getty Images

General view of the Central Business District (CBD) in Beijing on April 11, 2018.

China’s central government-owned firms should strictly control debt investments and high-risk businesses in global operations, the country’s state assets regulator said on Monday.

Centrally-owned firms have cut 16 million tonnes of steel capacity and 62 million tonnes of coal capacity so far, spokesman Peng Huagang told a news briefing.

Total profit from China’s central government-owned firms for the first three months of 2018 rose 20.9 percent from a year earlier to 377.06 billion yuan ($60.11 billion), it was also reported on Monday.

For March, profit rose 17.8 percent on-year to 169.87 billion yuan, according to preliminary details provided by the State Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) before a briefing in Beijing.

The average debt-to-assets ratio is at 65.9 percent at end-March, 0.4 percentage point lower compared with the beginning of this year, SASAC said.

The regulator will complete coal overcapacity cuts and firmly deal with “zombie firms,” SASAC added.