The People's Bank of China is set to officially start a new round of credit ratings on corporate-loan borrowers in Shanghai next month as a move to ward off potential banking risks.

　　The PBOC'S Shanghai branch said yesterday that the new annual rating, starting April 1, will track companies in Shanghai that have outstanding loan value exceeding 50 million yuan (US$6.02 million).

　　"The rating will let commercial banks have a deep grasp of these loan borrowers' credit information before extending lendings to them," said the PBOC Shanghai Branch in a statement.

　　Last year the proportion of local corporations whose credit ratings are higher than the investment grade of BB, reached 76.73 percent, compared with 73.07 percent in 2002.

　　A total of 2,136 local enterprises, most of which are large- and medium-sized companies, were rated last year.

　　Analysts said creditworthiness of companies engaged in the real estate and hotel industries will be focused on as many did not post sound creditworthiness last year.

　　The proportion of real estate developers with BBB-plus grades was only 51.23 percent across 326 property companies evaluated, compared with the average 56.1 percent in all industries.

　　"The creditworthiness of property companies is unlikely to change much this year as the central government still emphasizes cooling the excessive lending to real estate developers," said Wang Ying, an analyst of Centrus Business Credit Consulting Corp.

　　The nonperforming loan ratio in the city's 19 home-grown lenders stood at 4.52 percent at the end of last year, down 2.15 percentage points from the beginning of last year, according to the China Banking Regulatory Commission Shanghai Supervision Bureau.