Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), the country's largest bank, said Wednesday that the balance of its lending to small businesses surged 53.5 billion yuan ($8.24 billion) in the first quarter of 2011.
China's Ministry of Finance (MOF) said on Wednesday it will float 32.52 billion yuan ($5.01 billion) in seven-year book-entry treasury bonds starting Thursday.
China's new yuan lending in April stood at 739.6 billion yuan ($113.8 billion), 8.8 percent higher than that in March.
The gold price in Hong Kong moved up HK$156 to close at HK$14,156 per tael on Wednesday, according to the Chinese Gold and Silver Exchange Society.
Hong Kong stocks slipped on Wednesday as heavyweight HSBC fell. The benchmark Hang Seng Index moved down 44.2 points to close at 23,291.8 points, after trading between a day high of 23,509.01 points and a day low of 23,232.42 points.
China Development Bank, one of the three policy banks in China, said on Wednesday that by the end of last month, it had issued 90.3 billion yuan ($13.89 billion) to rebuild areas hit by a devastating earthquake in southwest China's Sichuan province in 2008.
China will continue to implement a prudent monetary policy, a People’s Bank of China (PBOC) official told China Business News on Tuesday.
The ChiNext Index, launched by the Shenzhen Stock Exchange (SZSE) on June 1, 2010, edged down 0.13 percent, or 1.25 points, to 929.95 Wedensday.
China's stock index futures closed lower Wednesday with the contract for May, the most actively traded, down 0.26 percent from the previous close to 3,139.8.
Chinese shares dropped Wednesday after the release of inflation data which rose 5.3 percent in April from a year ago.
The National Bank of Kazakhstan does not rule out converting part of its foreign reserves to Chinese yuan if it becomes an internationally recognized reserve currency, the bank CEO said Tuesday.
China's northwestern Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region aims to have five percent of its foreign trade settled in yuan, China's official currency, in 2011 as the country continues to push for the use of the yuan in international trade.