Auditors to scrutinize housing mortgage By Ng Ting Ting (chinadaily.com.cn) Updated: 2005-07-08 11:36 The National Audit Office will closely inspect the
Agricultural Bank of China regarding its housing mortgage this year. Currently,
many state-own commercial banks are adversely affected by high ratio of
non-performing loans.
A woman walks past
a poster advertising personal housing mortgage service in Zhengzhou, Henan
Province in this May 18, 2005 photo. Housing mortgage will be under
scrutiny by the National Audit Office this year.
[newsphoto] | "The legal status of mortgage and
individual loans will be the spotlight of our auditors," said the director of
Public Finance Audit under the National Audit Office, Fan Peng.
According to the official website of the National Audit Office, the
Agricultural Bank of China, one of the major housing mortgage providers, will be
the highlighted among the inspection of commercial banks this year.
Since the beginning of May, a group of auditors from the National Audit
Office have entered the Beijing head office of the Agricultural Bank of China
and other 20 branches in other provinces to collect information regarding
assets, liabilities and loss and profit, according to a report by the China
Youth Daily.
It is believed that this audit would uncover fake mortgages by thorough
inspection.
"This time, we are not going to just focus on mortgages but also the money
flow of housing loans and the entire system of mortgage enterprises or other
related businesses," said Fan.
A researcher from the National Audit
Office told the Beijing-based Fazhi Wanbao that this auditing accounts for
one-third of the job of the public finance audit department, implying that
housing loan will be the focus of this year.
High ratio of non-performing loans will adversely affect the operation of
banks and many state-owned commercial banks are currently facing this problem.
The National Audit Office stated on their website that the main problem of
all commercial banks is the low quality of mortgages, which resulted in the
constantly high ratio of non-performing loans.
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