Bond issues in China expanded markedly in 2015 and the range of participants in the debt market became more diverse, the nation's central bank said in a report on Monday.
Issues hit 22.3 trillion yuan ($3.39 trillion) in 2015, up 87.5 percent year-on-year, the People's Bank of China (PBC) announced. The growth rate was up 55.2 percentage points from 2014.
The central bank figures showed that 21 trillion yuan worth of bonds were issued through the interbank market in 2015, up 81.3 percent.
The Ministry of Finance issued 2 trillion yuan worth of treasury bonds, while local governments issued 3.8 trillion yuan of debt, the PBC said. Also, bonds issued by companies reached 7 trillion yuan in 2015. Other bonds were issued by institutions like commercial banks and securities firms.
At the end of 2015, China's bond market was valued at 47.9 trillion yuan, with the interbank market valued at 43.9 trillion yuan, the figures showed.
The investor base in the interbank bond market became larger and more diverse in 2015, with the introduction of private investment funds, futures companies and asset management companies, the PBC said. The number of participants stood at 9,642, up 49.2 percent from a year earlier, the PBC said.
Among those participants were 308 overseas central banks, sovereign wealth funds and other foreign institutions, up 128 year-on-year.
