China's financing activity showed signs of slowing down as the increment in aggregate social financing — the total amount of financing to the real economy — reached 12.93 trillion yuan ($1.79 trillion) in the first quarter of 2024, down by 1.61 trillion yuan compared with the same period of last year, official data showed.

The People's Bank of China, the country's central bank, said on Friday that China's outstanding aggregate social financing came in at 390.32 trillion yuan as of the end of March, up 8.7 percent year-on-year.

The growth rate was down from 9 percent by the end of February and 10 percent seen a year earlier, according to the central bank.

Meanwhile, the PBOC said that the increment in yuan-denominated loans came in at 9.46 trillion yuan in the first quarter, compared with 10.6 trillion yuan during the same period last year.

The broad money supply, or M2, stood at 304.8 trillion yuan as of the end of March, up 8.3 percent year-on-year, down from 8.7 percent a month earlier.