China's new yuan-denominated lending posted stronger than expected growth in September, expanding 154.7 billion yuan from August to reach 857.2 billion yuan (139.6 billion U.S. dollars), according to the central bank data on Thursday.

Compared with a year ago, the loans were 70.2 billion yuan higher, marking the highest monthly reading in three months, according to a statement from the People's Bank of China (PBOC).

The September data beat a widely expected 750 billion yuan in new lending for the month.

Aggregate social financing, which counts the liquidity flow into the economy from lenders, equity markets and the shadow banks, rose by 94.5 billion yuan from August but fell 359.8 billion yuan year on year to reach 1.05 trillion yuan in September.

For the first nine months, social financing stood at 12.84 trillion yuan, or 1.12 trillion yuan lower than a year ago, as banks moved part of their off-balance financing business back inside their book amid tighter regulation.

Sheng Songcheng, director of the central bank's surveys and statistics department, said the credit and social financing growth was "reasonable and appropriate", given a better structure and ample liquidity in the market.

"The contraction of off-balance financing indicated positive results of tougher regulation," Sheng said, adding: "this helped reduce financial risks and made the financial support of the real economy more sustainable."

For the first nine months, Chinese banks lent a total of 7.68 trillion yuan in renminbi and 61.5 billion U.S. dollars in foreign currencies.

More than one-third of the new corporate loans during the period went to micro and small firms, as policymakers have vowed to offer more support to the sector.

The total outstanding loans stood at 84.74 trillion yuan at the end of September, up 13 percent from previous year, while outstanding deposits rose 10 percent year on year to 116.38 trillion yuan.

However, the country's foreign reserves fell by 100 billion U.S. dollars from the second quarter to reach 3.89 trillion U.S. dollars at the end of September, the PBOC said, without explanation.

From January to September, 4.82 trillion yuan of cross-border trade was settled in yuan, while 720.8 billion yuan of direct investment was settled in yuan, according to PBOC.

M2, a broad measure of money supply that covers cash in circulation and all deposits, increased 12.9 percent year on year to 120.21 trillion yuan at the end of September, accelerating slightly from a growth of 12.8 percent seen in August.

The faster M2 growth was an immediate result of a new calculation method after commercial banks were told early last month to give up their last-minute efforts to attract deposits at the end of every month or every quarter to meet the loan-to-deposit ratio requirement.

Sheng admitted that the M2 growth would be greatly underestimated if they still used the previous statistical method to calculate the data, as showed by the M1 data compiled in the old way.

The narrow measure of money supply (M1), which covers cash in circulation plus demand deposits, rose 4.8 percent year on year to 32.72 trillion yuan at the end of last month, slowing 0.9 percentage points from August and 4.5 percentage points from a year ago.

Lian Ping, chief economist of Bank of Communications, said he expected the credit growth to slow sharply in October due to the shortened working days in the wake of the week-long National Day holiday.

For the whole year, Lian projected new yuan loans would hit 9.5-10 trillion yuan in 2014, compared with 8.89 trillion yuan last year.

He said he could not rule out the possibility of an interest rate cut or lower reserve requirement ratio as a subdued inflation gave policymakers more room for possible policy adjustment.

China's consumer inflation rose just 1.6 percent year on year in September, touching the lowest level in four years.

Earlier this month, the PBOC reiterated that it will continue the prudent monetary policy, flexibly use monetary instruments and maintain "appropriate" liquidity to achieve reasonable growth in loans and social financing.

Whether a broad monetary easing will materialize depends on policymakers' judgement of the economic outlook next year, Lian said, adding he sees the gross domestic product growth slow to 7.3 percent in the third quarter.

China's GDP grew only 7.4 percent in the first half of the year.

The National Bureau of Statistics is scheduled to released GDP data for the third quarter next week. Endi