BEIJING, April 12  -- Chinese investors are allowed to subscribe for new shares from 30 companies this week, according to the country's initial public offering (IPO) schedule.

Among those companies, 11 will be listed in the Shanghai Stock Exchange, 2 in the Shenzhen Small and Medium Enterprise Board and 17 in the ChiNext Index, which tracks China's NASDAQ-style board of growth enterprises.

The firms are planning to issue a total of 1.48 billion shares to raise 15.46 billion yuan (2.52 billion U.S. dollars), down from 21.36 billion yuan raised during the IPOs in March, according to data from Wind Information Co., a Shanghai-based financial information provider.

Subscriptions for the new shares are arranged between Monday and Thursday and may lock up a total fund of 2.4 trillion to 2.8 trillion yuan, weighing heavily on the total capital available on the stock market.

Investors' fund for subscribing new shares will usually be frozen for three trading days.