(Adds details, backgrounds) BEIJING, Sept 26 (Reuters) - China’s local governments issued 488.4 billion yuan ($75.5 billion) in new special bonds in August, up from 340.3 billion the previous month, the finance ministry said on Sunday. For the first eight months of the year, new local government special bond issuance stood at 1.84 trillion yuan, the ministry said in a statement on its website, or about 50.5% of the annual quota. Local governments are widely expected to quicken special bond issuance in the second half of 2021 to bolster investment and support economic growth that is losing steam. China set its local government special bonds issuance quota at 3.65 trillion yuan for 2021, down from 3.75 trillion the previous year. Any acceleration in government bond issuance could also help boost total social financing (TSF), a broad measure of credit and liquidity. ($1=6.4660 Chinese yuan renminbi) (Reporting by Cheng Leng, Yilei Sun and Kevin Yao; Editing by William Mallard and Clarence Fernandez) Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.