BEIJING - China told the nation's banks yesterday to increase their reserves, cutting the amount of money available for lending.
The step - the third so far this year - is an effort to cool an investment boom that Beijing worries could lead to a financial crisis.
The order comes on top of repeated increases in interest rates and investment curbs imposed on real estate, auto manufacturing and other industries over the last year. The effort has had limited success in slowing the growth of investment.
The amount of reserves that lenders must keep with the central bank was raised half of a percentage point to 10.5 percent of their deposits, effective April 16, the central bank said.
The central bank intends to "maintain liquidity at an appropriate level and prevent the overly fast growth of credit," the bank said on its Web site.
Chinese leaders want to maintain rapid growth in the economy, which expanded 10.7 percent last year, but they worry that excessive investment in real estate, factories and other assets will leave banks with dangerously high debts if borrowers go bankrupt.
Despite the controls, total investment rose 24 percent last year, according to government figures.
Beijing has raised the bank-reserve ratio six times over the last year, each time by half of a percentage point. It stood at 7.5 percent of deposits before the first increase in June.
Economists expect similar reserve increases once every quarter this year to compensate for the swelling amount of money in the banking system amid multibillion-dollar export surpluses.
The trade surplus rose 74 percent last year to $177.5 billion, straining ties with Washington and other trading partners.