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.