China’s Ditic Late in Paying Foreign Loans

Dalian International Trust and Investment Corp., the fund-raising arm of the northern Chinese port city of Dalian, missed payments on some of its foreign loans, a company official said. The company, known as Ditic, is the latest in a string of Chinese trust companies unable to repay debts on time. A Ditic official said only that its total debt is much less than the $2.42 billion cited by the Asian Wall Street Journal newspaper today. China has 239 trust companies, many of which borrowed short-term funds to fund longer-term projects. The government has said it may force many of them to merge or close, leaving as few as 30 or 40 in operation.