Forex reserves dull foreign debt risks
Print Edition
CHINA’S foreign debt rose quickly last year but the country’s huge foreign reserves will ensure that risks are low, the top foreign exchange watchdog said yesterday.
China’s outstanding foreign debt rose 17 percent year on year to US$863.2 billion by the end of 2013, the State Administration of Foreign Exchange said in a statement yesterday.
In 2012, the foreign debt rose an annual 11 percent.
“The increase in the size of foreign debt was fast and was driven mainly by trade-related borrowing activities,” Guo Song, deputy head of SAFE’s capital account management unit, said at a briefing in Beijing.
China’s outstanding short-term foreign debt of one year or less accounted for 78 percent of the total outstanding foreign debt at the end of last year, SAFE said.
Although the figure far exceeded the internationally accepted safety level of 25 percent, SAFE said there is “theoretically no risk” because of China’s US$3.8 trillion foreign exchange reserves, the biggest in the world.
“We do not see any problem with the high ratio, instead we focus more on the ratio of short-term debt to the foreign exchange reserves,” Guo said.
“That ratio was 17.7 percent, far below the internationally accepted safety level of 100 percent.”
SAFE pointed out that the foreign debt figure does not include the outstanding external debt of Hong Kong, Macau or Taiwan.
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