China's financing activity remained lukewarm as the increment in aggregate social financing — the total amount of financing to the real economy — stood at 14.8 trillion yuan ($2.04 trillion) in the first five months of 2024, down by 2.52 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 391.93 trillion yuan as of the end of May, up 8.4 percent year-on-year.

The growth rate was up from 8.3 percent by the end of April but down from 9.5 percent seen a year earlier, according to the central bank.

Meanwhile, the PBOC said that the increment in yuan-denominated loans came in at 11.14 trillion yuan in the first five months of the year, compared with 10.19 trillion yuan during the first four months.

The broad money supply, or M2, stood at 301.85 trillion yuan as of the end of May, up 7 percent year-on-year, down from 7.2 percent a month earlier.