China central bank makes biggest weekly cash withdrawal in two months
FILE PHOTO: People wearing face masks walk past the headquarters of Chinese central bank People's Bank of China (PBOC), where the Chinese national flag flies at half mast in Beijing as China holds a national mourning for those who died of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), on the Qingming tomb-sweeping festival, April 4, 2020. REUTERS/Tingshu Wang
SHANGHAI : China's central bank made its biggest weekly cash withdrawal in more than two months this week after liquidity conditions loosened at the start of the month, at a time when some market participants expect a reduction to banks' reserve requirements soon.
The People's Bank of China (PBOC) drained a net 983 billion yuan ($141.09 billion) through reverse repurchase agreements in open market operations this week, according to Reuters calculations based on official data.
The weekly net cash withdrawal, the biggest since the first week of this year, marked the fourth straight week that the PBOC took short-term money out of the banking system.
Markets appeared to be little fazed by the PBOC's latest move, with the volume-weighted average rate of the benchmark seven-day repo trading in the interbank market, stood at 2.0104 per cent around midday, not far from the PBOC's official reserve repo rate for the same tenor of 2 per cent.
Analysts expect the PBOC to keep a broadly accommodative stance this year to support a nascent economic recovery, but mixed data in the first few months of the year is stirring debate in markets over whether its next move could be cautious tightening or further easing.
"The central bank is very likely to control market rates at around policy rate levels via open market operations," said Ming Ming, chief economist at Citic Securities,
He expects the PBOC will instead cut the amount of cash banks must set aside early in the second quarter.
Such market expectations came after Yi Gang, governor of the central bank, said last week that using the reserve requirement ratio (RRR) to release long-term liquidity remains an effective tool to aid economic recovery.
"The PBOC will still provide sufficient liquidity to support credit growth," said Tommy Wu, senior China economist at Commerzbank.
"The central bank could do so by cutting RRR. It may also guide the benchmark bank lending rates, the loan prime rates (LPRs), lower to reduce interest burden on households and businesses."
China is due to release its monthly LPR fixing on March 20.
($1 = 6.9674 Chinese yuan)
