SHANGHAI (Reuters) – China’s central bank injected funds through medium-term loans into the financial system on Wednesday, while keeping the interest rate unchanged for the 20th month in a row.
The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) said it was keeping the rate on 500 billion yuan ($78.5 billion) worth of one-year medium-term lending facility (MLF) loans to some financial institutions steady at 2.95% from previous operations.
The PBOC’s earlier decision to lower banks’ reserve requirement ratio (RRR) also came into effect, freeing 1.2 trillion yuan worth of long-term fund, the central bank said in an online statement.
The central bank also injected another 10 billion yuan worth of seven-day reverse repos into the banking system, offseting the same amount of such short-term liquidity operations due on Wednesday.
($1 = 6.3671 yuan)
(Reporting by Winni Zhou and Andrew Galbraith; Editing by Tom Hogue)
