People's Bank of China, China's central bank [Photo: Xinhua]

China will raise the reserve requirement ratio by 0.5 percentage points for commercial banks as of Sept. 25, the People's Bank of China (PBOC) announced on Thursday.

It is the seventh time this year the Chinese government has opted to raise the reserve requirement ratio to curb excess liquidity.

The central bank said the move was aimed at "strengthening liquidity management in the banking system and checking excessive money and credit growth".

PBOC statistics show that China's foreign exchange reserves reached 1.33 trillion U.S. dollars at the end of June, up 41.6 percent over the same period last year.

A total of 266.3 billion U.S. dollars was added to the country's foreign exchange reserves in the first half of 2007, 144 billion U.S. dollars more than a year earlier.