China's social financing, a broad measure of funds raised by the entities in the real economy, reached 7.76 trillion yuan (1.19 trillion U.S. dollars) in the first half of this year, the central bank said on Friday.

The figure was 384.7 billion yuan less than the same period a year ago, the People's Bank of China (PBOC) said on its website.

The notion of social financing was raised by the central bank at the end of last year to reflect increasingly diversified sources of financing which included not only bank lending but also direct financing from non-bank sources such as stock and bond markets.