BEIJING, March 6 (Xinhua) -- China's commercial banks saw a net forex settlement surplus of 44.2 billion yuan (6.4 billion U.S. dollars) in January, the country's forex regulator said Friday.

Photo: VCG

Forex purchases by banks stood at 1.01 trillion yuan in January, while sales reached 962.5 billion yuan, data from the State Administration of Foreign Exchange showed.

Last year, the accumulative amount of foreign exchange settlement and sales by banks were 12.76 trillion yuan and 13.15 trillion yuan, with the accumulative deficit of 384.3 billion yuan.

Affected by the epidemic situation, the data in Hubei and some other regions were reported by parts of financial institutions.