Debt swap covers 54% of repayments

More than half of the high-interest local government debt that falls due this year will be covered under a debt swap plan arranged by the Ministry of Finance, which said on Friday that the swap would not raise the debt level further.

The ministry on Monday disclosed that it had ordered issues of 1 trillion yuan ($160 billion) of low-yield municipal notes that will replace legacy liabilities, in a bid to ease local governments' mounting interest repayment pressure.

An audit in June 2013 found local governments faced repayments of 1.858 trillion yuan in 2015. The debt swap covers 53.8 percent of that amount, and the conversion could reduce interest payments by 40 billion yuan to 50 billion yuan a year, according to the ministry.