China's banking and insurance regulator will soon release new rules to further boost financing to small and medium-sized companies, it said in a press release circulated ahead of a media briefing.

The China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission (CBIRC) said it would encourage financial institutions to take full advantage of the latest monetary, fiscal and tax policy steps to increase lending to smaller firms.

The regulator would support commercial banks to issue special bonds for lending to small firms and apply favorable risk weighting to evaluate bank loans to smaller firms, it said.

Wang Zhaoxing, vice chairman of the CBIRC, told a press conference on Tuesday that China has made solid progress in improving financial services to private firms, with the loans balance for private enterprises reaching 30.4 trillion yuan ($4.37 trillion) as of the end of September, and the growth rate is still rising.

The average interest rate for loans made by 18 major commercial banks to smaller firms stood at 6.23 percent in the third quarter, 0.7 percentage points lower than the first quarter, Wang said.