China central bank drains net $63 billion yuan on week, biggest since mid-Feb

SHANGHAI (Reuters) – China’s central bank injected 150 billion yuan ($21.10 billion) into the banking system on Friday through seven-day reverse repurchase agreements, while keeping the interest rate unchanged at 2.20%.

The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) said in a statement Friday’s fund injection was to counteract the impact from factors including maturing reverse repos and financial institutions’ reserve requirement payments, and in order to keep banking system liquidity “reasonably ample”.

For the week, the PBOC drained a net 450 billion yuan ($63.29 billion), the biggest weekly net drain since mid-February, compared with 670 billion yuan of injection on a net basis a week earlier.

($1 = 7.1091 Chinese yuan)

($1 = 7.1106 Chinese yuan renminbi)

(Reporting by Winni Zhou and Se Young Lee; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)