Central bank takes steps to regulate liquidity in July

The People's Bank of China (PBOC), the central bank, announced on Monday that it launched a series of targeted measures in July to regulate liquidity.

The central bank said it injected 900 million yuan (135.8 million U.S. dollars) through standing lending facility (SLF) to ensure provisional liquidity demand from financial institutions.

Meanwhile, the PBOC retrieved a net 43 billion yuan of liquidity from the financial system in July in open market operations via medium-term lending facility (MLF).

The MLF tool was first introduced in 2014 to help commercial and policy banks maintain liquidity by allowing them to borrow from the central bank by using securities as collateral.

By the end of July, liquidity injected through pledged supplementary lending (PSL) to China Development Bank, Agricultural Development Bank of China and the Export-Import Bank of China, had risen to 1.8 trillion yuan, said the PBOC. The fund was earmarked to support projects such as substandard housing renovation and major water conservation projects.

The PSL mechanism is a monetary tool created in 2014 that allows the central bank to extend loans to policy banks at low interest rates.