BEIJING -- China's private sector was more aggressive in investing than the public sector in the first nine months of this year, with a fixed-asset investment growth of 34.2 percent year-on-year, said the country's top economic planner on Monday.

Excluding investment by rural households, fixed-asset investment from January to September rose 24.9 percent from a year earlier to 21.23 trillion yuan ($3.34 trillion), of which about three-fifths came from the private sector, according to a statement by the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) on Tuesday.

The growth rate of private investment was 9.3 percentage points higher than the nation's average fixed-asset investment growth, said the NDRC statement.

Analyzed by regions, over half of China's fixed-asset investment in January-September was made in the country's economically underdeveloped central and western regions, where the investment growth were 29.9 percent and 29.5 percent, respectively.

Meanwhile, investment in the eastern and coastal areas in the period rose by only 22.3 percent, 2.6 percentage points lower than the nation's average.

Specifically, investments in primary and secondary industry reached 495.7 billion yuan and 9.28 trillion yuan, respectively, while investment in the tertiary industry totaled 11.45 trillion yuan.