Mr Gao, who is also CIC's chief investment officer, was speaking on Wednesday to a JPMorgan conference in Beijing that was closed to the media.

The figure represents a modest increase on the US$70 billion to US$80 billion sum that Jesse Wang, CIC's chief risk officer, cited as being available for overseas investment when he spoke in Hong Kong on April 2.

When CIC was set up last September, it said it would invest a third of its initial capital, about $67 billion, abroad.

Mr Gao told the conference that this sum had risen because the government had decided CIC would need to spend less on restructuring Agricultural Bank of China and other financial institutions, the FT reported.

AgBank is the last big state-owned lender awaiting a bailout.

Media reports have said the capital injection could be as much as US$40 billion, but a senior CIC official said privately earlier this year that the sum could be as little as US$25 billion, according to people who were present.

Mr Gao told the JPMorgan conference that CIC would entrust most of its enlarged overseas allocation to external managers to be invested in equities, fixed-income and alternative investments including private equity funds, hedge funds and possibly commodities. -- REUTERS