Vice Premier Wang Qishan has urged China's lenders to increase financing for rural development and small businesses in order to ease fundraising difficulties amid the global economic uncertainty and the country's monetary tightening.

Wang made the call during a two-day inspection tour in Gansu Province, noting that financial institutions should make renewed efforts to meet the reasonable funding demands from small enterprises and the "three rurals," the rural economy, rural community and rural residents.

Facing the extremely complicated and uncertain global economic situation, the country's finance sector should strive to better handle the relationship between economic development, economic restructuring and checking inflation, continue to carry out the prudent monetary policy and optimize the credit structure, said Wang.

He also urged more efforts to strengthen financial supervision and regulate the financial market to prevent systematic and regional financial risks.

The government has been tightening its monetary policies in order to combat stubbornly high inflation. Capital-thirsty small businesses have been feeling the pinch as funding has declined.

The central bank has required banks to hold more of their deposits in reserve six times and hiked interest rates three times this year to contain inflation, which rose to a 37-month high of 6.5 percent in July.