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SAFE to monitor overseas debts owed to Chinese exporters

By Nie Peng (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2008-11-21 17:44

Worse, more than 90 percent of Chinese exporters have not bought export credit insurance policies for their products and therefore most small- and medium-sized enterprises can do nothing but accept their fate when foreign importers default on payment.

Many domestic companies have also failed to establish a management mechanism for accounts receivable or take concrete actions to monitor overseas credit risks even though they have such mechanisms in place.

A MOFCOM research report shows that only 11 percent of Chinese enterprises that engage in import and export businesses have established their own overseas credit monitoring system, with 93 percent of them being multinationals that have are foreign-funded.

Enterprises in Yiwu of Zhejiang Province, dubbed China's "foreign trade weather vane", have seen their bad debt rate increase by about 268 percent. Sinosure's Yiwu sales branch has received 93 cases of bad debts reported by local enterprises as of September this year, with a total value of 25.60 million yuan, a rise of over 1,500 percent year-on-year.

"We have received several new cases of bad debts this week and more cases are expected to flood in at the year end," Chen Feng, assistant director of Zhejiang's export and credit insurance administrative bureau. "The US financial crisis has played a key role in the significant rise of risks faced by Zhejiang's exporters."

In the past five years, the value of reported bad debts had accounted for an average 1.3 percent of the total export value underwritten by Sinosure's Zhejiang branch, but the rate has been continuously reaching new highs this year, hitting an unprecedented 2.3 percent in October.

"The rate is up 77 percent over the average rate for the past five years, which means Zhejiang's exporters face a 77 percent higher risk of possible defaults by foreign importers," said a source with the branch.

Sinosure said it underwrote US-bound exports worth over $3 billion in the first half of this year, and received reports of bad debts worth more than $100 million in the same period, which means the bad debt rate rose to 3.3 percent from the previous 1 percent.

A source with the Fujian bureau of foreign trade and economic cooperation said more than 500 exporters in the eastern province have been hit by payment defaults amounting to over $1 billion this year, because of massive bankruptcies in the United States.

The deteriorating situation about overdue debts abroad has already aroused concern from ministries such as MOFCOM.

Earlier this month, the ministry issued a circular, asking local governments, chambers of commerce, business associations and enterprises to make concerted efforts to secure timely payments by foreign importers.

The ministry also required local commerce bureaus to tighten their monitoring on credit risks in exports and make a timely report of important findings.

In addition, MOFCOM ordered local commerce authorities to conduct a survey on small- and medium-sized enterprises, which lack international trade experience to cope with operating risks, and guide them to set up an effective risk management system for their overseas business.

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