South Korean Banks' Bad Loan Rate Slips

The delinquency rate for loans extended by South Korean banks fell in November from a month earlier, mainly due to a decrease in fresh overdue loans and more bad debt clearance, the financial regulator said Thursday. The loan delinquency rate of 18 local banks stood at 1.30% last month, down 0.05% from the previous month, according to the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS). The bad loan rate in corporate lending shed 0.08% to 1.56%, with the corresponding figure for household loans sliding 0.03% to 0.98% over the cited period, the FSS said. The on-month fall in banks' overdue debt rate came as they saw their amount of fresh bad loans decrease, while they managed to clear off more delinquent debts, the regulator noted, according to South Korea's News Agency (Yonhap). The amount of fresh overdue debts shrank by 800 billion won (US$745.4 million) to 2.4 trillion won in November from a month earlier, with that of debt clearance reaching 2.9 trillion won, up 1.6 trillion won from the previous month. The FSS also cited a dip in the delinquency rate of property financing and shipbuilding loans. The overdue rate for property financing came in at 6.53% from 6.61%, with that for shipbuilding loans falling 0.49% to 3.54%. The delinquency rates for both types of loans had stood as high as double digits in the past few months, due to the sluggish local real estate market and global downturn. The banks' outstanding amount of corporate loans reached 630.6 trillion won in November, up 3.2 trillion won from the previous month. Household loans totaled 459.5 trillion won, up 1.2 trillion won on-month over the cited period, according to the regulator. S. Korea's Gov't Assets up 5.6% in 2011  Total assets owned by South Korea's government grew more than 5% on-year in 2011 due to land, buildings and equipment purchases, the South Korea's finance ministry said Thursday. The ministry said that  the government held about 8,319 trillion won about (US$7.75 trillion) worth of assets at the end of 2011, up 5.6% or 439 trillion won from a year earlier, according to South Korea's (Yonhap) News Agency. It is 2.3 times larger than in 2001 when the government held about 3,576 trillion won, the ministry said. The asset increase is due to purchases of more land and tangible fixed assets such as buildings and machinery equipment. The two types of assets accounted for 88.8% of the total, the ministry said. Government land was estimated at 3,744 trillion won in 2011, up 176 trillion won from a year earlier. About 65% of the land was concentrated in Seoul and its surrounding areas, the ministry said. Tangible fixed assets held by the government came to 3,646 trillion won last year, up 183 trillion won from a year earlier, according to the ministry.