China’s central bank drains liquidity from market

2017-11-08
Xinhua

BEIJING — China’s central bank continued to drain cash from the financial system on Nov 8 as the liquidity remained abundant.

The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) effectively withdrew 40 billion yuan (around $6 billion) from the money market as the volume of maturing securities exceeded injections through open market operations.

The PBOC pumped 160 billion yuan through reverse repos, comprised of 70 billion yuan of weeklong agreements priced to yield 2.45 percent, 30 billion yuan of 14-day deals priced to yield 2.6 percent, and 60 billion yuan of 63-day contracts with a return of 2.9 percent.

Reverse repos worth 200 billion yuan matured on Nov 8.

Interest rates remained the same as Nov 7 when a total of 80 billion yuan was drained from the money market.

The overnight Shanghai Interbank Offered Rate, which measures the cost at which banks lend to one another, edged up to nearly 2.6 percent on Nov 8, to remain low.

The central bank has increasingly relied on open market operations for liquidity management, rather than cuts in interest rates or reserve requirement ratios.

China set the tone of its monetary policy in 2017 as prudent and neutral, keeping appropriate liquidity levels but avoiding excessive liquidity injections.