China's central bank injects liquidity into market

China's central bank pumped cash into the financial system through open market operations to maintain liquidity in the market Friday.

A total of 100 billion yuan (about $14.10 billion) was injected into the market via the medium-term lending facility (MLF), according to the People's Bank of China (PBOC), the central bank.

The funds will mature in one year at an interest rate of 2.95 percent.

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.

The central bank skipped reverse repo Friday.

Friday also saw the implementation of the 50 basis-point reduction in the reserve requirement ratio for small and medium-sized banks, which came after the first round of reduction for an equal amount on April 15 to bolster the virus-hit real economy.

The reduction in the cash that lenders must hold as reserves is expected to unleash around 200 billion yuan of long-term capital into the market, said the PBOC.

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.