HONG KONG (Reuters) – The risks to Hong Kong banks from heavily indebted Chinese property developers are manageable, a top executive at the city’s banking regulator said on Tuesday.

China Evergrande Group’s current debt crisis is threatening homebuyer confidence in China, and forcing developers to lower prices. Evergrande’s $305 billion in liabilities has raised concerns that its problems might spread to China’s financial system, and cause havoc around the globe. However, this worry has been largely quelled since the damage done so far has been concentrated in property.

Arthur Yuen (deputy chief executive, Hong Kong Monetary Authority) stated that these issues are unlikely to impact the Asian financial center banks.

The media as well as the industry has focused a lot on high-leveraged borrowers and in particular developers in China. On that one, both the industry and ourselves have been paying a lot of attention to industry sectors that are under relatively greater stress in the past few years, so our banking system’s exposure to these highly-leveraged borrowers is not that high.”

Yuen stated that although the risk is manageable right now, the sector should remain alert.