China is capable of paying pensioners on time, despite deficits in the endowment insurance funds in some provinces and the pressure brought by a quickly aging population, social security authorities said.

From January to May this year, the endowment insurance funds for enterprise employees received 1.58 trillion yuan ($231 billion), up by 23.9 percent year-on-year, while the expenditure stood at 1.35 trillion yuan, an increase of 23.2 percent, according to a statement released by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security late on Thursday.

The surplus of the funds had reached 4.08 trillion yuan by May.