China Regulator Denies Freeze on Foreign Banks' Loan Growth

China's banking regulator rejected a newspaper report that it has widened restrictions on loan growth to include foreign banks for the first time.

"I have heard of no such thing," Lai Xiaomin, the China Banking Regulatory Commission's Beijing-based spokesman, said in a telephone interview today.

The Chinese central bank will set annual quotas on loan growth at individual foreign banks operating in the country next year, with different firms given different targets, the South China Morning Post reported today, citing an unidentified official from an overseas bank.

The government will limit the loan growth of Chinese commercial banks to 12 percent next year from the current 15 percent, according to the newspaper. China also expects the banks to adhere to quarterly loan growth targets instead of annual ones, the report said.

China's industry watchdog gave "informal guidance" to domestic banks to cool loan growth that's already topped its target ceiling of 15 percent this year, Lai said in a Nov. 19 interview, rejecting a Wall Street Journal report that day, which said lending had been "frozen" at Oct. 31 levels.