China's foreign exchange regulator said Friday that more foreign currencies were sold than bought through Chinese banks in January, resulting in 68.4 billion U.S. dollars of forex surplus in the banks for the month.

The January surplus from bank-to-client transactions represented a 32.8 percent surge from December last year, according to a statement by the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE), China's forex regulator, on its website.

China's institutional and individual clients exchanged 150.3 billion U.S. dollars of foreign currencies for renminbi in January while bought 81.9 billion U.S. dollars of foreign exchanges from banks, according to the SAFE.

The SAFE statement noted that banks' foreign exchange surplus figures did not include banks' own forex transactions and interbank transactions.

In January, the overseas business-related proceeds of China's domestic institutional and individual clients via banks totaled 186.7 billion U.S. dollars and paid 150.7 billion U.S. dollars to overseas business, it added.

Last year, the surplus of Chinese banks' foreign exchange through their transactions with domestic clients increased 51 percent year on year to 397.7 billion U.S. dollars.