BEIJING - Lock-up shares worth 85.06 billion yuan ($13.88 billion) will become eligible for trade on China's stock markets in the next week, markedly down from this week.

A total of 5.1 billion shares from 26 companies will be tradable on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges from March 16 to 20, down from 207.42-billion-yuan shares unlocked this week, data from Wind Info showed on Saturday.

Under China's market rules, major shareholders of non-tradable stocks are subject to one or two years of lock-up before they are permitted to trade the shares.

China CSR Corp Ltd will see non-tradable shares worth 17.64 billion yuan become tradable on March 20, the largest amount of such shares to hit the stock market in the period.

Chinese stocks closed higher on Friday, with the benchmark Shanghai Composite Index up 0.7 percent to finish at 3,372.91 points.