China has the ability to give banks greater freedom to decide how much they pay for large deposits or even scrap a ceiling on such rates as the next step in liberalizing the country's interest rates, the central bank's statistics chief wrote in a newspaper article.

The People's Bank of China, which announced last month it would let banks offer deposit rates as much as 10 percent higher than a benchmark it set, can widen how much lenders are allowed to pay for large sums deposited for medium and long periods of time, Sheng Songcheng, head of the central bank's statistics department, wrote in the Financial News. The ceiling for such deposits could also be removed, Sheng wrote in Saturday's edition of the newspaper published by the central bank.