Economists last night urged the government to unveil policies to encourage private and foreign investors to get involved in the disposal of state-owned non-performing assets.

"The situation now in China is quite different from 20 years ago, and a considerable section of Chinese people have the ability to invest money in different ways,'' said Gao Shangquan, a renowned economist and chairman of China Society For Research on Economic System Reform.

"They should be new and potential buyers and owners of the assets,'' Gao said.

Foreign investors should be allowed to enter the investing field and buy equities and creditor's rights in accordance with international practices, Gao told a two-day workshop which opened Wednesday in Beijing on the disposal of state-owned non-performing assets.

"Therefore, it is urgent to speed up law-making in this endeavor while the state accelerates the pace of opening-up to the world community,'' Gao said.

"We should try our best to devise strategies to deal with non-performing assets because they can reduce financial risks and stimulate state-owned enterprises.''

Among approximately 200 experts, economists and officials of the workshop are high-level heads of China's top-four asset management companies.

They attended the meeting to attract would-be owners of huge assets acquired from the state-owned commercial banks.

"I'd like to point out here that some companies do have non-performing assets but this doesn't necessarily mean the company is unprofitable,'' said Tian Guoli, deputy chief executive of China Cinda Asset Management Corporation.

According to the law of commercial banks, if the loans are overdue by more than six months, they will be classified as non-performing assets.

"In some cases, the debtors are just in financial difficulty but they are promising,'' Tian said.

Together with the other three chief executives, Tian urged more active investment at home and abroad to the sector.

"The bad assets are not rubbish waiting for disposal and gold is hidden among them,'' Tian said.

Statistics show that since the four management corporations were opened two years ago, they have acquired non-performing assets of 1.4 trillion yuan (US$168 billion), which were once owed to commercial banks by State-owned enterprises. They have disposed of 130 billion yuan (US$15.7 billion) of non-performing assets.

(China Daily 09/20/2001)