Business & Finance

China money rates up after central bank drains funds

Published Updated

China's central bank will drain 66 billion yuan ($10.43 billion) from the money markets through 28-day bond repurchase agreements on Tuesday.

With a total of 29 billion yuan maturing this week, that means the central bank has drained 37 billion yuan so far this week.

Dealers said the central bank's move had little impact on market liquidity thanks to sufficient funds. There were also expectations that money rates would hover around low levels ahead of the month-end due to sufficient liquidity.

"The rise in the repo rate is not very sharp and the key seven-day repo is still hovering around 3 percent today, indicating funding in the market is quite good," said a dealer at a Chinese commercial bank in Shanghai.

The weighted-average seven-day bond repurchase rate edged up 19.78 basis points to 3.0015 percent at midday, off its 10-month low struck on Friday.

The 14-day repo rate rose to 3.0651 from 2.9384 on Monday, while one-day repo only rose 1.34 pips to 2.3259 percent.

The People's Bank of China (PBOC) has declined to issue central bank bills so far this year, due to the small volume of maturing bills and tight liquidity prior to the cut in banks' required reserve ratio (RRR) in late February.

On the bond market, the benchmark five-year IRS rose 7 bps to 3.32 percent and the one-year IRS was up 5 bps at 3.11 percent.

Copyright Reuters, 2012