China's central bank skips open market operations

BEIJING - China's central bank Monday skipped open market operations, amid efforts to keep liquidity in the banking system at a stable and reasonable level.

The People's Bank of China said that the refund of financial institutions' required reserve payment and local treasury cash management was sufficient to counter factors such as maturing reverse repos.

Some 100 billion yuan ($15.77 billion) of reverse repos matured Monday, meaning market liquidity will drop by the same amount.

A reverse repo is a process by which the central bank purchases securities from commercial banks through bidding, with an agreement to sell them back in the future.

In Monday's interbank market, the overnight Shanghai Interbank Offered Rate, which measures the cost at which banks lend to one another, fell by 12.1 basis points to 2.65 percent, but the rate for one-month loans climbed slightly to 4.07 percent.

Analysts expect the central bank to maintain a certain amount of open market operations to ease a quarter-end liquidity strain.

China will maintain a prudent and neutral monetary policy in 2018 as it strives to balance growth and risk prevention.