China's c.bank affirms appropriately loose policy

BEIJING Dec 23 (Reuters) - China's central bank affirmed that it will maintain an appropriately loose monetary policy next year but also vowed to more strictly control new lending.

The People's Bank of China, in a statement after its quarterly monetary policy committee meeting, added that it would improve the flexibility of its policies.

Along with saying that it wanted to avoid big swings in lending throughout the year, it said that it would control loans to new projects as well as to industries facing overcapacity and polluting, energy-intensive sectors. (Reporting by Langi Chiang, Zhou Xin, Jason Subler and Simon Rabinovitch; Editing by Ken Wills)