China to maintain prudent monetary policy: Central bank

BEIJING - China will maintain a prudent monetary policy with more flexibility, a quarterly meeting of the monetary policy committee at the central bank concluded on Monday.

The People's Bank of China (PBOC) will flexibly use a wide combination of monetary tools to keep moderate liquidity in the market and help realize a reasonable growth of money supply and social financing, the committee decided.

It will raise the ratio of direct financing to lower the fund-raising cost of enterprises. Through direct financing, enterprises can get funds from the capital market by issuing shares or bonds, rather than from costly intermediary institutions like banks or insurers.

The PBOC will continue to push interest rate liberalization and the reform on the formation mechanism of the yuan exchange rate, and will keep the exchange rate basically stable at a reasonable and balanced level.

The meeting came after the policy-setting Central Economic Work Conference, during which Chinese leaders agreed that the country's prudent monetary policy needs to be more flexible so as to create appropriate monetary conditions for structural reforms next year.