BEIJING — China’s local governments ramped up bond issuance in the first quarter of this year to ensure enough funding for major projects and stabilize investment, official data showed on April 16.

Local governments across the country have issued a total of 1.18 trillion yuan ($176.1 billion) of bonds in the January-March period, according to statistics from the Ministry of Finance (MOF).

The bond issuance by local governments in the first three months came much earlier than those from a year earlier while the financing costs went down remarkably, said Hao Lei, deputy head of the MOF’s budget bureau, at a press conference.

In March, central authorities put a ceiling on the amount of newly added local government debt for the whole year of 2019 at 3.08 trillion yuan.