The share of bad loans, or non-performing loans (NPL), among banks for the year 2004 is worse than 2002 and 2003, the South China Morning Post said. Meanwhile, the government has reported a drop, which includes write-offs of bad loans in May and June and an increase in overall lending, the SCMP said. The CBRC figures showed the outstanding NPLs of the 16 major banks at the end of 2004 had fallen by RMB395bn from 2003, but still had amounted to RMB1.71tn. The NPL ratio fell from 18% at the end of 2003 to 13%. The big four state banks' NPLs alone fell from RMB1.9tn yuan to RMB1.57tn, a drop from 20% to 16%. What the CBRC should have added was last year Bank of China and China Construction Bank transferred more than RMB470bn in bad assets to their asset management companies. The NPLs would have exceeded RMB2tn without the transfers. China has Asia's biggest NPLs after Japan.