China's old-for-new car program provided 510 million yuan (about 76.35 million U.S. dollars) in subsidies for vehicle purchases in September, the Ministry of Commerce (MOC) said Saturday.

Some 36,000 automobiles were sold under the trade-in program last month, up 50 percent from August, the MOC reported in a statement on its website.

In the first nine months of 2010, the country issued 3.5 billion yuan in subsidies for old-for-new vehicle purchases, worth 28.6 billion yuan.

A total of 250,000 autos were sold under the program during the nine-month period, according to the statement.

The surge in old-for-new car purchases was partly due to the government's move in January to increase the trade-in subsidy to 5,000-18,000 yuan, as opposed to the earlier subsidy of 3,000-6,000 yuan.

In early June, the government rolled out new incentives for purchases of fuel-efficient cars, including a subsidy of 60,000 yuan for all-electric vehicle buyers and a 3,000-yuan subsidy for certain fuel-efficient cars equipped with 1.6-liter or smaller engines.

The trade-in program was introduced by the MOC and the Ministry of Finance last year as part of the country's efforts to boost domestic consumption amid the global economic downturn and to eliminate gasoline-guzzling vehicles.