China may remove its floor for interest rates as early as this year, Chinese media said Thursday, an important step toward freeing the country's tightly controlled interest rates market.

Ba Shusong, a researcher at the Development Research Center, a think tank that makes recommendations to China's cabinet, was quoted by local media as saying that interest rate reforms are imminent.

"This is going to happen immediately," Ba said in an online video clip on chinanews.com. "If it's early, it will happen in the second-half of this year. If it's late, it will happen next year," Ba said.

To protect the profits of its State banks, China sets a minimum limit on interest rates and a maximum limit on deposit rates, ensuring that banks get a guaranteed margin of at least 90 basis points.

Banks at present can offer deposit rates as high as 110 percent of benchmark rates and lending rates as low as 70 percent of benchmark levels.