Chinese banks' net foreign exchange sales contracted 67 percent year-on-year to 281.5 billion yuan ($40.9 billion) in the first quarter of 2017 as the domestic economic growth picked up and the U.S. dollar weakened, China's currency regulator said on Thursday.
Capital outflow pressure has greatly eased, and the supply and demand for China's foreign exchange reserves have basically been balanced since the beginning of 2017, the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) spokesperson Wang Chunying said at a press conference in Beijing.
The balance resulted primarily from a more stable domestic economy and international financial market, especially the U.S. dollar, Wang said.
China's GPD grew at a higher-than-expected rate of 6.9 percent year-on-year in the first quarter, according to data released Monday by the National Bureau of Statistics.
Despite the U.S. Federal Reserve's interest rate hike in March, the value of the dollar has declined by 1.8 percent in the first quarter.
Wang predicted that China's cross-border capital flow will continue to head toward a balance thanks to the high growth rate of China's economy and measures to attract foreign capital.
China ranked third on a list of top foreign investment destinations in 2016, according to the Global Investment Trends Monitor released by the UN Conference on Trade and Development in February.
