SHANGHAI/SINGAPORE (Reuters) – China’s central bank rolled over maturing medium-term policy loans while keeping interest rates unchanged on Monday, matching market expectations.
The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) said it was keeping the rate on 125 billion yuan ($18.08 billion) worth of one-year medium-term lending facility (MLF) loans to some financial institutions unchanged at 2.75% from the previous operation.
In a Reuters poll of 30 market watchers conducted last week, 26 participants, or 86.7%, predicted no change to the MLF rate, while four respondents expected a marginal rate cut.
With 100 billion yuan worth of MLF loans set to expire this month, the operation resulted in a net 25 billion yuan fresh fund injection into the banking system.
The central bank also injected 2 billion yuan through seven-day reverse repos while keeping borrowing costs unchanged at 2.00%, it said in an online statement.
($1 = 6.9121 Chinese yuan)
(Reporting by Winni Zhou in Shanghai and Tom Westbrook in Singapore; Editing by Jacqueline Wong)