No policy tightening by PBOC: HSBC economists

The current spike in China's money-market rate is just temporary and not a sign of policy tightening by the People's Bank of China (PBOC), two HSBC economists said Friday.

There is no need for the PBOC, the central bank, to tighten or loosen monetary policy in the coming quarters as inflationary pressures remain modest and additional money inflows can be expected, according to a research note by Qu Hongbin, co-head of Asian economic research of HSBC and Sun Junwei, China economist of HSBC.

China's seven-day repo rate, a benchmark for short-term funds, climbed to almost a two-month high of 4.67 percent on Thursday. Meanwhile, the central bank refrained from injecting liquidity by skipping reverse repo issuance for the third consecutive time.

The suspension of reverse repos might have been caused by the need to slow down money inflows, which started to accelerate as indicated by the 126 billion yuan ($20.54 billion) increase of the forex purchase position by commercial banks in September, they said.

They believed the recent acceleration of headline inflation mainly reflected the seasonal spikes of fresh vegetables and fruits. The underlying inflationary pressures remain modest, given the below-trend GDP (gross domestic product) growth and the limited upstream price pressures.

Housing data this week showed China's house prices in September gained 9.1 percent from last year, raising fresh concerns about property bubbles and consumer inflation.

To check property prices, Beijing will likely reply by increasing supply rather than tightening monetary conditions, they noted.

The ongoing renminbi appreciation and the renewed expectation of delayed quantitative easing (QE) tapering all mean risks of additional money inflows in the coming months, fuelling liquidity growth, according to their research.

Keeping liquidity at an appropriate level is still the policy priority for the PBOC, according to its latest statement on it website on Oct 16.

We expect monetary policy to remain relatively stable, with some fine-tuning measures to be utilized in order to adjust liquidity conditions, they added.