Cash crunch puts squeeze on securities

China International Capital Corp Ltd said in a note that the US was expected to cut the scale of quantitative easing in the second half, and even halt bond purchases next year, leading to less short-term capital flows into China, or even capital outflows, "which might trigger a reverse of domestic liquidity situation".

Major commercial lenders are pressuring the central bank to free up funds to ease the unusual cash squeeze, such as cutting reserve requirements for banks, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday, citing anonymous sources.

Last Thursday the People's Bank of China suspended the issuance of central bank bills and repurchase operations, to soothe liquidity tensions.

"We believe that in the next few days or weeks the central bank will gradually improve liquidity supply - but it won't cut interest rates or reserve requirement ratio among banks," Wang added.

She said the monetary authority has made it clear it would rather allow a further hike in inter-bank interest rates than see further over-expansion in credit.

Guillermo Mondino, an analyst at Citigroup Global Markets Inc, said that any shift of policy, from an easing bias to a neutral position, was likely to be gradual amid weak recovery and benign inflation.