BEIJING - Chinese lenders saw their bad loan ratio decline by the end of May, fresh evidence of improved bank asset quality, the top banking sector regulator said.

Their bad loan ratio stood at 1.99 percent by the end of last month, 0.16 percentage points lower than a year earlier, Liu Zhiqing, deputy head of the prudential regulation bureau of the China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC), said Thursday at a press briefing.

The value of outstanding non-performing loans (NPL) stood at 2.3 trillion yuan ($337 billion) by the end of May, said Liu.

NPL ratios at banks in coastal areas including Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Guangdong have declined substantially from a year ago, said Liu.

The bad loan ratio for Chinese lenders was 1.74 percent at the end of 2016, CBRC data showed.