China's central bank will continue to implement prudent monetary policies and increase financial incentives for small firms, said its chief, Zhou Xiaochuan, on Monday.

Zhou said at a conference on improving the financial environment for small firms that China will provide financial support to small firms as part of efforts to sustain stable economic growth.

Small and micro-sized firms serve as a significant channel for creating jobs, a major platform for the growth of entrepreneurship, and an important force of scientific innovation, according to Zhou.

"Financial support to small firms' development will lead to a stable and relatively fast economic growth," said the official at the conference.

Zhou said China will keep a reasonable credit supply to provide a good financial environment for small and micro-sized firms, while lending to such enterprises should grow at a rate no lower than the average loan growth of the country's banks.

China will steadily push forward market-oriented interest-rate reform and the establishment of a deposit insurance system, he stressed.

Official data showed that small and micro-sized enterprises create about 80 percent of the country's jobs, but they usually have difficulty in securing bank loans, as Chinese banks prefer to lend to larger companies, especially state-owned enterprises.