About 1.63 billion yuan (240 million U.S. dollars) of public funds were saved last year by cutting the number of government and Party officials' overseas trips, down 37.6 percent from the previous year, China's National Bureau of Corruption Prevention says.

The number of public-funded overseas trips decreased by 49 percent from the previous year, according to the bureau's website,

China has intensified the crackdown on unnecessary public-funded overseas travel among government departments and Communist Party officials. The bureau said disciplinary bodies dealt with 165 such cases and punished 187 officials involved, with 9.88 million yuan retrieved.

Serious cases included former leading officials of the coal industry bureau of northeastern Jilin Province frequently arranging overseas tours paid for by the public, officials in Yan'an of northwestern Shaanxi Province using public funds to cover overseas sightseeing tours under dubious pretexts and officials of the Beijing customs asking enterprises to cover their overseas trips.

The bureau said officials involved in these cases were seriously dealt with.