China central bank continues to skip open market operations

BEIJING - China's central bank suspended open market operations for the 10th working day Friday, citing sufficient liquidity in the banking system.

Liquidity was at a "relatively high level," which can offset the effect from the depositing of required reserves at financial institutions, the People's Bank of China (PBOC) said in a statement.

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.

The suspension of reverse repos has lead to a net withdrawal of 510 billion yuan (about $78.7 billion) from China's money market this week, as the same amount of reverse repo contracts matured in the first week of 2018.

The PBOC said earlier that it would conduct open market operations in a flexible way to meet the liquidity needs of banks.

China will continue a prudent and neutral monetary policy in 2018 as the world's second-largest economy strives to balance growth with risk prevention.

"Prudent monetary policy should be kept neutral, the floodgates of monetary supply should be controlled, and credit and social financing should see reasonable growth," said a statement released after the Central Economic Work Conference.