BEIJING — China saw net purchase of its RMB bonds by overseas institutional investors in July after registering net sales for four months in a row.

Foreign institutional investors made a total of 1.0311 trillion yuan (about $152.24 billion) of spot transactions of RMB bonds, including buying 518.8 billion yuan of bonds and selling 512.3 billion yuan of bonds, registering a net purchase of 6.6 billion yuan, data from the China Foreign Exchange Trade System showed.

Last month also saw an increase of eight new overseas institutional investors engaging in trade in China's bond market. By the end of July, the Chinese bond market had 1,051 overseas institutional investors in total.

Analysts attributed the growing interest in RMB bonds to the country's continuous economic recovery and a generally stable foreign exchange rate.

Official data released on Aug 15 showed that China's major economic indicators including the index of services production and fixed-asset investment posted year-on-year growths in July.