The surplus of Chinese banks' foreign exchange purchases to sales in transactions with clients in July reached US$26.6 billion, revealed statistics of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) Tuesday.

In July, China's institutional and individual clients sold 114.2 billion U.S. dollars of foreign exchange to banks while forex purchases by clients from banks were 87.6 billion U.S. dollars, resulting in a surplus of 26.6 billion U.S. dollars in the month, said a statement on the SAFE's website.

The figure did not include the larger amount from banks' own forex transactions and interbank transactions, according to the statement.

The surplus of Chinese banks' foreign exchange purchases to sales in transactions with clients was 66.5 billion U.S. dollars in the second quarter, compared with 92.7 billion U.S. dollars in the first quarter.

The SAFE only started releasing monthly and quarterly data on bank foreign exchange transactions this year. In 2009, the annual surplus fell 42 percent to 263.5 billion U.S. dollars, according to SAFE's data released in March.

By the end of June this year, China's foreign exchange reserves rose 15.1 percent year on year to 2.4543 trillion U.S. dollars.