BEIJING -- China's small-scale credit companies have issued a total of 89.4 billion yuan ($13.75 billion) of new loans in the first half of this year, the country's central bank said Tuesday.

China has a total of 3,366 micro-financing firms by the end of June this year with outstanding small credit reaching 287.5 billion yuan, up from 3,027 companies three months ago, the People's Bank of China (PBOC) said in a statement on the website.

Inner Mongolia autonomous region had 342 microcredit companies by the end of last month, the most among all provincial regions in China. Meanwhile, the provinces of Liaoning, Jiangsu and Anhui all have more than 200 such institutions.

In the first half of this year, the country's financial institutions granted 4.17 trillion yuan in yuan-denominated loans, 449.7 billion yuan less than the same period of last year, said the PBOC earlier this month.