China's bad loans increased sharply in the first three months of the year, official data showed, with analysts saying Friday the total was at its highest in almost three years.

Outstanding non-performing loans at Chinese banks stood at 646.1 billion yuan ($103.6 billion) at the end of March, up 54.1 billion yuan from the beginning of the year, the China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC) said in a statement.

Bad loans accounted for 1.04 percent of total lending, up 0.04 percentage points from the start of January, the watchdog's statement posted Thursday said.

Both the outstanding value and the bad loan ratio were the highest since the second quarter of 2011, Bank of Communications economists Lian Ping and Xu Wenbing said in a research note.

"The increase in bad loans mainly came from small companies and some industries with overcapacity," they said.

They also warned that risks in the real estate sector and local government financial vehicles were rising.

January-March marked the 10th consecutive quarter that outstanding bad loans rose, they said, adding the quarterly increase was more than double the average of recent quarters.

They expected non-performing loans to continue to grow in the coming months, with the proportion of bad loans to rise as high as 1.5 percent of total lending if economic growth was to "slow down by a large margin".

But the CBRC said the bad loan ratio remained low and that banks' profitability and capital adequacy ratios were "good".

The CBRC announcement came after China released a series of economic indicators that indicated growth of the world's second-largest economy is slowing across the board in the January-April period.

Fixed-asset investment, a main measure of government spending on infrastructure, rose at its slowest pace in more than 12 years in January-April, government data issued this week showed.

Growth in industrial output, which measures production at factories, workshops and mines, remained weak last month.

China's economy grew 7.4 percent year-on-year in the first three months of 2014. That figure was weaker than the 7.7 percent in October-December and the worst since a similar 7.4 percent expansion in the third quarter of 2012.

The country's financial markets were rocked by several debt defaults earlier this year.

In one case, a $160 million investment product structured by Jilin Province Trust and backed by a coal firm failed to make capital and interest payments.

Chinese authorities have shown tolerance towards individual defaults, calling them unavoidable, but have pledged to keep potential risks in check.

China Southern orders 80 A320 planes: Airbus
Paris (AFP) May 16, 2014 - China Southern Airlines, which has the biggest fleet of aircraft in China, ordered on Friday 80 medium-haul Airbus A320 planes with a list value of $7.9 billion, Airbus said.

The deal, worth a headline equivalent of 5.8 billion euros, is for 30 of the existing models of the A320 and for 50 of the more energy-efficient A320Neo planes, Airbus said.

China Southern Airlines, in a statement to the Hong Kong stock exchange, said that it had obtained a discount from the list prices, as is usual in the airline industry.

The aircraft are to be delivered from 2016 to 2020.

China Southern Airlines already has a fleet of 249 Airbus aircraft, including five superjumbo A380 planes.

The airline, in its stock market statement, said that the latest planes ordered would increase its capacity as measured by tonnes carried per kilometre by 12.0 percent.

Airliner manufacturers, principally Airbus and its US rival Boeing, took bumper orders for new aircraft last year as airlines looked to renew their fleets after the financial crisis, and to gear up for forecast strong growth in airline traffic, particularly in emerging markets, in Asia and in China.