China's central bank said Monday that banks lent 175.1 billion yuan (27.77 billion U.S. dollars) to support the construction of low-income housing in 2011.

The lending accounted for 50.1 percent of the year's new loans in the property sector, up 31.7 percentage points from the beginning of last year, the People's Bank of China (PBOC) said in an annual financial report on its website.

As of the end of December, yuan-denominated lending in developing low-income housing projects stood at 349.9 billion yuan, the PBOC said.

The increase underlines the country's efforts to accomplish its goal of building 36 million low-income housing units by 2015.

The government said in early November that it met last year's goal of starting the construction of 10 million units by the end of October.

However, yuan-denominated lending growth slowed in the property sector as a whole last year, as a result of government tightening measures to rein in the red-hot property market.

The sector saw new yuan-denominated lending decrease by 770.4 billion yuan to 1.26 trillion yuan in 2011. The lending took up 17.5 percent of the year's total new loans, down 9.4 percentage points from that of 2010, the PBOC said.

As of the end of December, the sector's yuan-denominated lending rose 13.9 percent year-on-year to 10.73 trillion yuan, down from 27.4 percent in 2010, the PBOC noted.

The government has imposed a raft of measures to dampen property prices since 2010. Those measures include tighter credit supply, higher down payments, a ban on third-home purchases, a property tax in some cities and the construction of low-income housing.

Furthermore, the PBOC said medium- and long-term loans in both the industrial and service sectors grew slower in 2011.

As of the end of December, medium- and long-term loans stood at 6.09 trillion yuan in the industrial sector, up 9.3 percent year-on-year. But the rise was 7.1 percentage points lower than that in 2010.

The service sector saw its medium- and long-term loans rise by 9 percent year-on-year to 14.92 trillion yuan by the end of December, down from 25.8 percent in 2010.

Furthermore, new yuan-denominated lending to medium- and small-sized enterprises reached 3.27 trillion yuan in 2011. The figure took up 68 percent of the year's new total corporate loans, up 0.1 percentage point from a year earlier, the PBOC said.

Meanwhile, new bank lending to rural areas increased by 79 billion yuan year-on-year to 2.24 trillion yuan in 2011, while those issued to rural households and the agricultural industry decreased by 86.7 billion yuan and 164 billion yuan to 501.7 billion yuan and 245.2 billion yuan, respectively, the PBOC said.

The country's new yuan-denominated lending in 2011 totaled 7.47 trillion yuan, down from 7.95 trillion yuan in 2010, according to the PBOC.

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