S'pore pproperty mart default

S'pore pproperty mart default

SINGAPORE (AP): The weak local property market has suffered its first big default, when a Singapore-Hong Kong joint venture missed a deadline to pay 68.6 million Singapore dollars (US$41 million) on a plot for condominium development.

Kembangan Properties, a joint venture between Singapore's Eltech Electronics and Hong Kong's Lai Sun Development, missed the last deadline Friday to pay the remaining 75 percent of the tender bid it made last July.

The 78,758-square-foot (7,088-square-meter) site near the Kembangan Mass Rapid Transit station, was bought at 19 percent higher than the next highest bid, local newspapers reported Saturday.

Eltech, listed on the Stock Exchange of Singapore, had just branched out into property last year.

Property and bank shares have been tumbling on the stock exchange for the past two weeks. Property prices have weakened more than 25 percent from their peak in mid-1996, and banks, troubled by their undisclosed amounts of bad loans in Indonesia, have been reluctant to finance local property projects.