HONG KONG — The head of China’s central bank and other top financial regulators offered new details on Tuesday on the country’s steps toward a more market-driven economy, including plans to liberalize interest rates as early as next year and to allow the establishment of the first privately owned official banks.

Although the announcements signaled incremental progress in modernizing the country’s financial system and opening its still tightly controlled capital account, analysts welcomed the development.

China’s leadership under President Xi Jinping laid out a program of bold, market-driven overhauls in November, but details on how and when these measures would be put into effect have been slow in coming.

“China’s financial reforms are likely to advance faster than many had expected in 2014,” HSBC analysts led by Qu Hongbin, co-head of Asian economic research, wrote in a research note released Tuesday.