As the end of March this year, Vietnam's bad debts hit 202 trillion Vietnamese dong (9.6 billion U.S. dollars), accounting for 8.6 percent of the total outstanding credits, reported the central State Bank (SBV) of Vietnam on Friday.

Nguyen Huu Nghia, acting head inspector of the SBV, said the bad debts were mainly in industrial production and construction areas due to negative impacts from the economic downturn.

According to SBV, bad debts of high possibility of losing capital accounted for 40 percent of total bad debts. However, those debts are protected by risk prevention funds and mortgaged assets.

Previously, domestic credit institutions reported that by the end of May this year, the bad debt ratio was 117 trillion VND, or 4.47 percent of the total outstanding credits.

As the end of May, the real estate sector had outstanding loans of 197 trillion VND while it had bad debts of 12 trillion VND. Meanwhile, the stock market's bad debts were 4.1 percent of its total outstanding loans, reported SBV.

SBV said it is working on a plan to establish a debt trading company, but has not submitted it to the prime minister for approval yet.