Sector's development greatly supports regional economic growth

China's social financing has expanded rapidly in recent years and strongly supported regional economic growth, according to statistics published by the People's Bank of China on Thursday.

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In the eastern region, social financing hit 9.04 trillion yuan ($1.49 trillion) in 2013, increasing by 1.39 trillion yuan from 2011. In the central region, it rose by 1.10 trillion yuan to 3.40 trillion yuan. And in the western region, it increased by 1.29 trillion yuan to 3.79 trillion yuan.

The social financing of six major eastern provinces and cities including Shandong, Jiangsu and Zhejiang accounted for nearly 38 percent of the total social financing in China, falling 1.5 percentage points from 2012 and 6.2 percentage points from 2011.

The People's Bank of China statistics revealed social financing is less concentrated in the east and more balanced across regions than before, said an official in charge of the Statistics and Analysis Department of the central bank.

"The figures showed the central and western regions have the fastest-developing economies in China in recent years. In the past, when the central and western regions were economically underdeveloped, many commercial banks used to transfer the deposits they took from these regions to the eastern part of China for better investments," said Wen Bin, supervisor of macroeconomic research at the Bank of China's Institute of International Finance.

He noted that financial institutions have played an important role in supporting the economic development in the central and western regions, which relied on bank loans more heavily than did the eastern region.

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