China's overall external debt risk controllable: spokesperson

BEIJING - Financial risk from China's external debt is controllable overall and running within a reasonable range, said Wang Chunying, spokesperson for the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) Thursday.

All major indicators of the external debt, including the debt ratio and debt service ratio, remain within international safety standards, the SAFE spokesperson said.

Currency and deposit accounted for 42 percent of the external debt growth in 2017, or $124.6 billion, according to the forex regulator.

Meanwhile, debt securities rose $107.9 billion, taking up to 37 percent of growth, reflecting the increasing influence of China's interbank bond market amid its wider opening-up drive.

At the end of 2017, the outstanding external debt stood at $1.71 trillion, an increase of $294.8 billion from a year earlier. That translated to a debt ratio, or outstanding external debt to GDP ratio, of 14 percent, according to SAFE.

The ratio of short-term external debt to foreign exchange reserves was 35 percent, also within a reasonable range, it said.

SAFE said it was cooperating with the central bank to improve full-caliber cross-border financing macro-prudential management policy to ensure that overall debt risk was controllable.