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

The lending accounted for 50.1 percent of the sector's total new loans, 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.

Meanwhile, yuan-denominated lending in the entire property sector rose 13.9 percent year-on-year to 10.73 trillion yuan as of the end of December, compared to 27.4-percent growth in 2010, the PBOC noted.

The sector's new yuan-denominated lending decreased by 770.4 billion yuan to 1.26 trillion yuan in 2011, accounting for 17.5 percent of the country's total new loans. The share was down 9.4 percentage points from that of 2010, the PBOC added.

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

China aims to build 36 million low-income housing units by 2015. The government said in early November that the country met last year's goal of starting the construction of 10 million units by the end of October.