More Chinese Rural Banks Likely To Be Restructured-Yicai

More Chinese rural banks will be restructured as regulators speed up risk disposal, Yicai.com reported citing analysts following a brewing banking scandal in Central China’s Henan Province. China has a total 1,651 rural banks in China, even more than the number of counties, and 122 of them were labeled as high-risk institutions by the central bank as of Q2 2021, accounting for about 29% of all high-risk institutions, the newspaper said. Rural banks in general bear higher non-performing loan ratios than other banks, with the NPL rate standing at 4% in 2020, which compared to the 2% of city commercial banks and 2.4% of rural commercial banks, Yicai said citing a report by HuaAn Securities.