China's external debt at USD 585.97 bn

China has an outstanding total external debt of USD 585.97 billion by the end of March this year, the country's foreign exchange regulator said today.

The amount does not include the outstanding external debts of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR), the Macao SAR and Taiwan, the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) said in a statement.

Also read: India's External Debt as at the end of March 2011

Of the total outstanding external debt, registered external debt accounted for USD 366.87 billion and the balance of trade credit accounted for USD 219.1 billion.

Outstanding long- and medium-term external debt accounted for 29.75% of the total, while outstanding short-term external debt comprised 70.25%, the statement said.

In terms of types of debt, the balance of international commercial loans totalled USD 299.02 billion, accounting for 81.51% of the outstanding registered external debt.

The balance of foreign government loans and loans granted by international financial organisations amounted to USD 67.85 billion, accounting for 18.49% of the total amount.

In terms of currency structure, debt in US dollars accounted for 68.3% of the outstanding registered external debt, representing a decrease of 2.11 percentage points compared with that at the end of 2010.

Debt in Japanese yen accounted for 7.68%, down 0.88 percentage points.

Debt in euro accounted for 4%, down 0.41 percentage points, Xinhua reported.