China Keeps Medium-Term Lending Facility Rate Unchanged

(RTTNews) - China's central bank left the rate on medium-term lending facility unchanged on Friday after lowering the rate by 30 basis points last month.

The People's Bank of China maintained the medium-term lending facility rate at 2.0 percent.

The central bank today conducted a seven-day reverse repo operations of CNY 292.6 billion at an interest rate of 1.5 percent. The PBoC said it aims to keep adequate liquidity in the banking system at the end of the month.

In September, the bank had reduced the MLF rate from 2.3 percent, which was the first reduction since July.

Earlier this month, PBoC Governor Pan Gongsheng said that the bank could further cut the reserve requirement ratio by 0.2-0.5 percentage points at appropriate time depending on the market liquidity before the year-end.

Official data released this month showed that the second-largest economy expanded at the slowest pace in more than a year with property market continuing to be the biggest drag on growth.

GDP growth eased to 4.6 percent in the third quarter from 4.7 percent in the preceding period. Beijing aims to achieve around 5 percent growth this year.