CHINA Development Bank, the country's policy lender, yesterday said its bad loan rate stood at 0.31 percent at the end of the first quarter.

This was the eighth straight year for the bank to see a bad loan rate under 1 percent, CDB said at a meeting on its first-quarter performances.

Its total assets topped 7.55 trillion yuan (US$1.21 trillion) at the end of March 2013, CDB said.

In the first quarter, the bank said it lent 132.1 billion yuan to support a series of key government-supported projects in the coal, electricity, oil, transport, agriculture, forestry, fishery, communication and infrastructure sectors.

The bank granted 41.1 billion yuan in loans for environmental protection, energy saving and emission reduction in the first three months.

Meanwhile its outstanding loans in foreign currencies were US$248.7 billion at the end of the first quarter, CDB, also the country's biggest foreign investment and financing bank, said.

It will continue to serve state strategies and work to help transform the economic growth mode and boost the growth of the real economy, CDB said.