State Grid chief warns of power supply pressure

THE chairman of State Grid Corp. of China, the country’s top electricity network operator, Wednesday warned that power loads were expected to reach new highs in the oncoming winter, a company statement said.

China has recently managed to ease its worst electricity shortages in years, partly by boosting availability of coal for power plants, but State Grid chairman Xin Baoan told a company meeting the pressure to ensure supply remains very high and extreme weather conditions were having a significant impact.

Jinhua first to log over 10 billion express parcels

AS of Nov. 12, Jinhua City, eastern China’s Zhejiang Province, had logged more than 10 billion express parcels this year, the country’s first to reach such a massive delivery volume.

The data were released Wednesday by the local postal authorities. Currently, about 30.4 million parcels are delivered from Jinhua to corners worldwide every day. Meanwhile, the average annual growth of the city’s express sector exceeded 55 percent. To date, Jinhua’s total scale of express delivery accounts for about one-tenth of the country and half of Zhejiang.

Profits of commercial banks up 11.5%

CHINA’S commercial banks raked in total net profits of 1.7 trillion yuan (US$265.9 billion) in the January-September period, up 11.5 percent year on year, data from the country’s top banking and insurance regulator showed.

At the end of September, outstanding performing loans of these banks totaled 159.4 trillion yuan, according to the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission. The balance of the banks’ nonperforming loans stood at 2.8 trillion yuan, up 42.7 billion yuan from the end of June, while their nonperforming loan ratio went down 0.01 percentage point to 1.75 percent.

Huarong to get US$6.57b from investors

CHINA’S top manager of distressed assets will raise more than US$6 billion in fresh capital from State-owned financial institutions, helping it shore up its capital requirements.

China Huarong Asset Management Co. said late Wednesday that it will issue 39.22 billion domestic shares and not more than 1.97 billion H shares that will see it raise 42 billion yuan (US$6.57 billion). Five State-owned financial companies are among the investors that have agreed to subscribe to the shares, Hong Kong-listed Huarong said.