Loans to China's rural areas grew at a quicker pace in the first quarter amid government's strengthened efforts to bolster rural development, data from the central bank showed.

By the end of first quarter, outstanding loans to the country's rural areas amounted to 27.51 trillion yuan (about 4.08 trillion U.S. dollars), up 7.6 percent year on year, according to a report from the People's Bank of China (PBOC).

The growth pace was 1.6 percentage points higher than recorded by the end of last year.

Financial institutions lent a total of 399.2 billion yuan to individual rural families and 104.7 billion yuan to the agricultural industry in the first three months, showed the report.