BEIJING, April 13 (Xinhua) -- The centralbank on Wednesday pumped 285.5 billion yuan (about 44 billion U.S. dollars) into the financial system in open market operations via medium-term lending facility (MLF).
The People's Bank of China (PBOC) said the operations were aimed at maintaining liquidity in the financial systemat a "reasonably abundant" level.
The MLF is a tool introduced in 2014 to help commercial and policy banks maintain liquidity by allowing them toborrow from the central bank by using securities as collateral.
The fresh funds were injected into17 financial institutions, according to the PBOC.
Among the new funds, 127 billionyuan is for 3 months, and 158.5 billion yuan is for 6 months, at interest ratesof 2.75 percent and 2.85 percent.
The interest rates were leftunchanged to "guide financial institutions to boost support for key areasand vulnerable links of the national economy," the central bank said.
To bolster the lukewarm economy, China hasadopted a more pro-growth policy stance, cutting benchmark interest rates andbanks' reserve requirement ratio (RRR) multiple times since 2014.
At a press briefing last month, acentral bank spokesperson described its monetary policies as "prudent witha slight easing bias."
The Chinese economy posted itslowest annual expansion in a quarter of a century at 6.9 percent in 2015, andthe National Bureau of Statistics is scheduled to release data for the firstquarter this year on Friday. Enditem
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