BEIJING, April 19 (Xinhua) -- Chinese commercial banks reported a significant drop in net foreign exchange sales in the first quarter as cross-border capital flows stayed balanced and stable, the country's forex regulator said Thursday.

Chinese lenders bought 434.2 billion U.S. dollars' worth of foreign currencies and sold 452.5 billion dollars from January to March, resulting in net sales of 18.3 billion dollars, according to Wang Chunying, spokesperson for the State Administration of Foreign Exchange.

This represented a 55-percent drop compared with the net forex sales volume in the same period last year, Wang told a press conference.

In March alone, commercial banks saw net forex sales of 9.2 billion dollars.

Forex supply and demand has been basically balanced so far this year, Wang said, noting that the market entities were more willing to borrow forex loans instead of buying foreign currencies from banks.

In line with the forex sales data, China's forex reserves rose to 3.14 trillion dollars at the end of March, 2.9 billion dollars higher than three months ago.