The PBOC on Thursday issued central bank bills worth 10 billion yuan, the first time it had used such an operation in 17 months to take some liquidity from the market.

"Generally speaking, social financing is still in a phase of rapid expansion, which could continue to support stable economic growth. The probability of economic recovery is still higher than a further slowdown," Yang said.

In the first four months of 2013, total social financing reached 7.91 trillion yuan, up by more than 3 trillion yuan from the same period last year, said the PBOC.

Zong Liang, deputy head of the international finance research institute under the Bank of China, said he considered the total social financing of 1.75 trillion yuan in a single month, and such an increase in M2, "absolutely too high".

Zong added: "The current monetary conditions are already loose enough to shore up economic growth.

"It would be more healthy if social financing could be maintained at somewhere between 1.2 to 1.5 trillion yuan for a single month."

In its first quarter monetary-policy report released on Thursday, the central bank said it will adopt various instruments to guide "stable and reasonable" growth in money supply and credit.