China's foreign debt up US$70 bln from March
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China's outstanding external debt by the end of June reached US$513.81 billion, up US$70.57 billion compared to the end of the first quarter this year, government figures show.
The figures excluded the outstanding external debt from Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR), Macao SAR, and Taiwan, the country's State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) said in a statement on its website Saturday.
Medium and long-term external debt, accounting for 33.09 percent of all outstanding foreign debt, totaled 170.022 billion U.S. dollars by the end of June, most of which was incurred for manufacturing and infrastructure construction in transportation, storage and postal services, the statement said.
Meanwhile, short-term external debt totaled 343.788 billion U.S. dollars, accounting for 66.91 percent of all outstanding foreign debt.
Outstanding trade credits made up 60.1 percent of the short-term debt. The SAFE statement said this was mainly because of the country's rapid foreign trade growth in recent years.
In the first half this year, China repaid principals for medium and long-term loans of 12.395 billion U.S. dollars, down 36.34 percent year on year; the interest paid during the period stood at 1.443 billion U.S. dollars, down 30.76 percent, the statement said.
The country's total foreign debt reached 428.6 billion U.S.dollars at the end of last year, up 14.4 percent from a year earlier.
