China discovered nearly 5 billion tons of iron ore deposits in 2009, chief engineer with the Ministry of Land and Resources (MLR) said Friday.

China reported 65,000 kilometers of highways designed for fast traffic by the end of 2009, second only to the United States, said Li Shenglin, Minister of Communications, on Friday.

Chinese commercial banks saw their bad loan ratio declined to 1.58 percent by the end 2009, China Banking Regulatory Commission said on Friday.

China's foreign exchange reserves almost hit $2.4 trillion by the end of 2009, up 23.28 percent year-on-year, the People's Bank of China, the central bank, announced on Friday.

China's new yuan-denominated lending in December rose to 379.8 billion yuan ($55.6 billion) from November's 294.8 billion yuan, the People's Bank of China, the central bank, said Friday.

China's tax revenue reported an annual increase of 9.1 percent to 6.31 trillion yuan ($928 billion) last year, said a statement posted Friday on the website of the State Administration of Taxation.

China's stock regulator said on Thursday that Chinese mainland capital market raised 446.6 billion yuan ($65.39 billion) in 2009, the second largest annual fund-raising in history.

China's National Council for Social Security Fund said on Thursday that assets under management reached 776.5 billion yuan ($113.7 billion) by the end of 2009.

The amount of foreign direct investment (FDI) China received rose for the fifth consecutive month in December, up 103 percent year-on-year to $12.1 billion, said Yao Jian, spokesman of the Ministry of Commerce in Beijing on Friday.

Housing prices in China's 70 large and medium-sized cities rose 7.8 percent in December 2009 from a year earlier, up 1.5 percent compared to the previous month, said the National Bureau of Statistics on Thursday.