China central bank governor says first-quarter economic data a little better than expected

BEIJING (Reuters) - China's central bank governor, Yi Gang, said on Thursday that first-quarter Chinese economic data has been a little better than expected.

Yi was a speaker at a Belt and Road conference in Beijing.

China is due to release its first-quarter gross domestic product (GDP) data on April 17.

GDP is expected to have grown around 6.8 percent from a year earlier, according to an ongoing Reuters poll.

(Reporting by Elias Glenn; writing by Ryan Woo; editing by Richard Pullin)