China Construction Bank profit slows with more bad loans in H1

BEIJING - China Construction Bank(CCB), the country's second-largest lender by market value, posted a net profit of 130.7 billion yuan ($21.2 billion) in the first half of this year, a year-on-year increase of 9.15 percent.

The growth rate was 3.5 percentage points lower than the first half of 2013, according to a statement filed to the Shanghai Stock Exchange on Friday.

In the first half of 2014, CCB's business revenue rose 14.2 percent to 287.1 billion yuan, 74 percent of which is attributable to net interest income, the report showed.

By the end of June, the lender's non-performing loans amounted to 95.7 billion yuan, an increase of 12 percent from the end of last year. The bad loan ratio edged up 0.05 percentage points from the end of last year to 1.04 percent.

CCB said its credit asset quality remained stable in the first half. The quality of loans to infrastructure-related sectors remained stable, and the new bad loans mainly arose from manufacturing, and wholesale and retail trade, it said.

The capital adequacy ratio (CAR), which reflects a bank's capacity to cushion potential losses with its capital, stood at 13.89 percent, up 0.55 percentage points from that at the end of 2013.

With CCB's interim results, the country's state-owned "Big Four" banks -- the other three being Bank of China, Agricultural Bank of China and Industrial and Commercial Bank of China -- have all disclosed half-year financial reports.

They all posted slowing profit growths and more bad loans in the first half as China's economic momentum remains sluggish.

The Chinese economy grew 7.4 percent year on year in the first half of 2014, slower than the official target of around 7.5 percent.

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