The People's Bank of China and the Fenghua city government in Zhejiang Province have both denied a Financial Times report that they held an emergency meeting on Tuesday on whether to bail out a debt-laden property developer in the province.

The PBOC clarified it has not attended the so-called emergency meeting to reportedly discuss bailing out Zhejiang Xingrun Real Estate Co because the developer faces a shortfall of at least 500 million yuan to pay off its debts.

The report by some foreign media was untrue, the PBOC said on its official Weibo account, without naming the newspaper. The PBOC strongly slammed the false report published by the media, it added.

The Fenghua government also denied that a meeting took place on Tuesday.

The UK-based Financial Times said the PBOC, along with officials from the city government and China Construction Bank, were on Tuesday "thrashing out ways to repay provincial developer Xingrun's 3.6 billion yuan (US$586 million) of debt."

The Fenghua government, however, said yesterday that six banks - CCB, Shanghai Pudong Development Bank, the Agricultural Bank of China, the Ping An Bank, China Zheshang Bank and the Evergrowing Bank - were called for a briefing on the matter on March 13.

According to local media reports, Xingrun borrowed 2.4 billion yuan from 19 banks. CCB was the developer's largest creditor with more than 1.1 billion yuan lent to it. SPDB lent it 380 million yuan.