Overall govt debt risks 'under control'

China will speedup the issuance of local government debt in the second half of the year, but the overall risks are under control, government officials and industry experts said.

"The issuance scale in the first six months is lower than the same period of last year, and the cost has been rising due to the increasingly tightened liquidity," said Wang Kebing, deputy head of the budget department at the Ministry of Finance.

Yang Xiaojing, an analyst specializing in local government debt with China Chengxin International, estimated a total of 455 billion yuan ($67.02 billion) newly added local government bonds were issued in the first half of the year, which was only around 28 percent of the government's target for 2017(1.63 trillion yuan), indicating that more bonds will be issued in the following six months.