BEIJING, Feb. 20 -- China's central bank on Thursday published regional social financing data for 2013, with Guangdong Province ranking first, followed by Beijing and Jiangsu Province.

It is the first time that the People's Bank of China (PBOC) has published such figures for different regions.

For Guangdong, social financing, which means the amount of funding the region's real economy receives from the financial system, reached 1.38 trillion yuan (about 227.26 billion U.S. dollars) last year, the PBOC data showed.

Social financing for Beijing and Jiangsu ranked second and third with 1.26 trillion yuan and 1.21 trillion yuan respectively, said the bank.

The central bank said the statistics, which compares financing support different regions' real economy obtain from the financial system, would help narrow the economic growth gap and promote interaction between the real economy and the financing system.

The country's social financing amounted to a record high 17.29 trillion yuan in 2013, up 9.7 percent from 2012, according to an earlier PBOC report.

In 2013, the six regions receiving the most financing are all east coastal regions, including Guangdong, Beijing, Jiangsu, Shandong, Zhejiang and Shanghai, which account for 37.9 percent of the country's total social financing, the data showed.