Details of Wenzhou financial reform to be out next month

Details about Wenzhou's plans to make financial reforms may be released as early as August, Zhang Zhenyu, director of the city's financial office, said on Monday.

The office has amended the plans and added details about rural financial reforms, Zhang said at a promotional fair held in Shanghai. The modified version has been submitted to the provincial authorities for their approval.

"Financial reform in rural areas will mostly concern cooperatives, financing and industry cooperation," he said.

Rural financial reforms will also direct more private capital to the real economy, Zhang told Shanghai Securities News.

Meanwhile, he said, the ratio of non-performing loans to total loans in Wenzhou's banking industry is nearing a peak and will decline gradually.

According to banking regulators, Wenzhou's banking system held 18.1 billion yuan ($2.8 billion) in non-performing loans by the end of June, nearly double what the amount had been at the beginning of the year.

The industry's non-performing loan ratio of 2.69 percent is high, Zhang said. But he said the actual ratio of bad debt to total debt is no more than 0.5 percent, amounting to about 1 billion yuan, and can be covered by banking revenues.

The Wenzhou banking industry had 19 billion yuan in revenue in 2011.