PBOC makes record liquidity injection

BEIJING - China's central bank pumped a record 290 billion yuan ($45.74 billion) into the money markets via reverse repurchase agreements (repos) Tuesday in an effort to ease a cash crunch.

The move, the largest single-day cash injection on record, means the People's Bank of China (PBOC) is already set to inject at least 185 billion yuan into the markets for the week.

The central bank conducted 190 billion yuan of 28-day reverse repos on Tuesday and offered 100 billion yuan of 14-day contracts. The bid interest rates stood at 3.6 percent and 3.45 percent respectively, unchanged from the previous reverse repos, according to a statement of its open market operations.

The record reverse repos are aimed at addressing a cash crunch toward quarter end and the coming lengthy holiday encompassing the Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day starting from Sept 30, Hongyuan Securities analyst He Yifeng said.

The incessant open-market operations signaled the central bank is favoring more delicate monetary tools to support liquidity and that it is reluctant to resort to blunter monetary instruments such as reserve requirement ratio (RRR), added Zhang Mo'nan, a researcher at the National Information Center, a government think tank.

A report, issued by the Bank of China on Monday, projected the PBOC will lower the RRR once or twice within 2012, but said the chance of further benchmark interest rate cuts is slim.

The PBOC has twice cut the benchmark interest rates and RRR this year to buoy national economic growth, which slowed to its lowest rate in more than three years in the second quarter of the year.