China's cross-border trade settlements in its national currency, the yuan or renminbi, totalled 8.6 trillion yuan (1.4 trillion U.S. dollars) by the end of September since the program's launch in July 2009, a central bank official said on Friday.

Cross-border yuan transactions have been conducted in 220 countries and regions and China had signed currency swap contracts with 23 countries and regions by the end of September, said Xing Yujing, secretary general of the monetary policy committee of the People's Bank of China (PBOC), the central bank.

The southern province of Guangdong is the pioneer of cross-border yuan transactions.

Guangdong's cross-border trade settlements in renminbi totalled 3.2 trillion yuan by the end of September, with 22,000 enterprises as well as 2,189 bank outlets conducting the business, said Wang Jingwu, head of the central bank's Guangzhou branch.

China first kicked off trials of cross-border trade settlement in yuan in 2009 in Hong Kong, Macao, ASEAN countries and selected other locations. The scheme has now been extended to all parts of China and all countries and regions overseas.

Earlier in October, the PBOC and the European Central Bank signed a 350-billion-yuan currency swap agreement, bringing the volume of currency swap deals to 2.2 trillion yuan in total.

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