China says central SOEs' debt risks controllable

BEIJING - Debt risks at China's centrally-administered State-owned enterprises (SOEs) are controllable as the companies' debt level continued to fall in 2016, according to the SOE watchdog.

Central SOEs saw the debt-to-asset ratio of their non-financial business drop for the third consecutive year to 60.4 percent at the end of 2016, down 0.3 percentage points from a year earlier, said the State-Owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC).

The firms' total debt matched their asset scale and overall the debt risks are controllable, the SASAC said.

China has 102 central SOEs, which manage the bulk of the country's state assets.

The companies saw their combined profits and revenues both return to growth in 2016. Total profits climbed 0.5 percent year on year to 1.23 trillion yuan ($178 billion), while revenues rose 2.6 percent to 23.4 trillion yuan, official data showed.