Chinese banks in March lent nearly twice as much money as in February, official data showed Thursday, as Beijing beefed up efforts to bolster a faltering economic recovery.

Banks granted a total of 1.06 trillion yuan ($171 billion) in new loans last month, up from 620 billion yuan in February, the central People's Bank of China said in a statement.

The Madrid stock exchange jumped more than 3 percent on Wednesday, with the Ibex 35 flying past the symbolic 8,000 point milestone, following a strong Wall Street opening.

The Ibex 35 index increased 3.32 percent to 8,133.5 points at 1625 GMT, after closing up 1.1 percent to 7,872.5 points on Tuesday.

Iraq's proven oil reserves have increased to 150 billion barrels, up from a previous figure of 143.1 billion barrels, oil ministry spokesman Assem Jihad said on Wednesday.

"Thanks to the work of the ministry of oil and exploration contracts awarded to energy companies these past two years," Iraq now has reserves of 150 billion barrels of oil, Jihad told Agence France Presse.

Kuwait said on Wednesday it will finance projects worth $1.3 billion (992 million euros) in its Gulf partner Bahrain as part of pledges made two years ago, an official statement said.

The funds will be used to finance part of four development projects over the next few years, including power transmission networks, housing projects and a key road, the state-owned Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development said.

Energy-rich Qatar has agreed to buy bonds from cash-strapped Egypt worth $3 billion over and above a previously announced aid package, Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem al-Thani said on Wednesday.

The announcement comes as Cairo holds difficult talks with the International Monetary Fund over a loan of $4.8 billion as part of a financing program to lift Egypt's economy out of crisis.

French central bank governor Christian Noyer said Wednesday that France should freeze pensions, civil servant salaries and social benefits to save 40 billion euros ($52 billion) by 2014 as it tries to cut a swollen public deficit and jumpstart growth that is forecast to be almost flat this year.

Noyer told Europe 1 radio that France had to come up with 40 billion euros in savings this year and next to reach the EU deficit limit of 3.0 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), saying Paris had to have "the same level of spending" in 2014 as in 2012.

Faced with growing pressure over tax evasion, Luxembourg confirmed Wednesday it would implement rules on the automatic exchange of bank account information with its EU partners from 2015.

"We can introduce the automatic exchange of (bank account) information without any danger from January 2015," Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker said, adding that the country's important financial services sector was ready for the change.

For more than two decades, a top French politician was able to quietly stash away hundreds of thousands of euros into a secret foreign bank account, all thanks to the lack of mechanisms that automatically and systematically help countries detect hidden accounts abroad.

The case of Jerome Cahuzac, who held a secret Swiss account despite being France's top official against tax fraud as budget minister, has exposed the meagre measures in place despite repeated public pledges to clamp down on tax fraud and tax havens.

China recorded a rare trade deficit in March as imports exceeded exports by $880 million, data showed Wednesday, as officials and analysts warned of lingering weakness in crucial overseas markets.

The surprise data come a day after Beijing released inflation figures that come in below forecast, which indicated the pick-up in the world's second biggest economy remained fragile.

Spain's economy is faring a little better after an end-2012 slump and growth could even return by the end of the year, Economy Minister Luis de Guindos said Tuesday as doubts grew over the prospects for debt-laden southern European economies.

The Spanish economy had "clearly" improved from the final three months of 2012, when output plunged by 0.8 percent, De Guindos told an economic forum.