Central bank injects funds into market in August

BEIJING - China's central bank said Friday it had injected 468 billion yuan ($71 billion) into the market via MLF, SLF and PSL tools in August to maintain liquidity.

The People's Bank of China (PBOC) said 400 billion yuan was via the medium-term lending facility (MLF)to keep interbank liquidity stable. The funds will mature in one year at an interest rate of 3.2 percent.

The injection brings total outstanding MLF loans to 4.34 trillion yuan.

The MLF tool was introduced in 2014 to help commercial and policy banks maintain liquidity by allowing them to borrow from the central bank using securities as collateral.

The central bank increasingly relies on open-market operations for liquidity, rather than cuts in interest rates or reserve requirement ratios.

In August, the PBOC also granted 34 billion yuan to financial institutions through the standing lending facility (SLF) to meet provisional liquidity demand.

Last month, the central bank injected 34.7 billion yuan of funds through the pledged supplementary lending( PSL) to the China Development Bank, Agricultural Development Bank of China and the Export-Import Bank of China.