China's central bank skips reverse repos Thursday

BEIJING -- The People's Bank of China (PBOC), the country's central bank, skipped open market operations via reverse repos Thursday.

The banking system reports reasonable and sufficient liquidity at present, the PBOC said in an online statement.

A total of 200 billion yuan (about $28.19 billion) of medium-term lending facility (MLF) matured Thursday, resulting in a net withdrawal of 200 billion yuan from the market.

A reverse repo is a process in which the central bank purchases securities from commercial banks through bidding, with an agreement to sell them back in the future, while the MLF tool was introduced in 2014 to help commercial and policy banks maintain liquidity by allowing them to borrow from the central bank using securities as collateral.

China's central bank pledged in its first-quarter monetary policy report that it will step up counter-cyclical adjustments to support the real economy, make the prudent monetary policy more flexible and appropriate, and continue to deepen the reforms of the market-oriented interest rate and the yuan exchange rate formation system.