Banco Popular Chino inyecta liquidez abundante, evita ajustar tasas de interés
Genevieve Signoret & Patrick Signoret
El banco central de China la semana pasada inyectó montos récord de liquidez a la banca comercial vía operaciones de reportos en reverso, en parte para cubrir la demanda de empresas buscando cumplir sus requerimientos de capital al cierre del mes. Se piensa que el banco central ha elegido proveer liquidez mediante reportos en reverso en vez de ajustar la tasa de encaje legal para evitar efectos potencialmente inflacionarios (FT, Also Sprach Analyst, WSJ).
FT:
China’s central bank pumped a record $60bn into the country’s money markets this week in an attempt to ensure that there will be ample cash in the economy to support the government’s push for more infrastructure investment.
The People’s Bank of China was continuing its pattern in recent weeks of injecting a large amount of short-term liquidity into the financial system via its open-market operations.
The net injection for this week came to Rmb379bn ($60.7bn), the highest weekly amount ever. The previous record was set in late September, just before a weeklong national holiday when demand for cash spiked.
This time, however, there was no immediate prompt for the massive injection, apart from the central bank’s determination to keep monetary conditions relatively loose.
[…] The central bank, however, appears to be worried that, if it sets reserve requirements too low, it could fuel a return of inflation. By contrast, the central bank can reverse its recent liquidity injections on short notice simply by letting the bond repurchase agreements expire.
For the full week, PBOC has made a net injection of RMB379 billion, a new record high net injection for the single week, suggesting that liquidity condition remains tight and unstable in China.
Note that while PBOC is reluctant to use reserve requirement ratio as a tool to manage liquidity in the banking system, the total net injection since June amounted to more than RMB1.3 trillion, and that is roughly equivalent to three 50bps cuts of reserve requirement ratio.
WSJ ofrece una explicación (negritas nuestras):
China’s central bank flooded the country’s financial system with a record amount of cash this week in response to a surge in demand for funds as commercial lenders rushed to meet capital requirements around the end of the month.
However, the move doesn’t necessarily signal an escalation of Beijing’s effort to ease monetary conditions, especially given the increasing evidence the domestic economy recovering—including improved manufacturing data released Thursday—and emerging concerns about inflationary pressures, analysts said.
The People’s Bank of China is generally seen as preferring to keep interbank liquidity conditions steady, and is now widely expected to resume draining cash from the system next week, when an enormous amount of funds are due to be returned to the central bank following recent injections.
The PBOC injected a net 379 billion yuan ($60.1 billion) into the money market this week through its regular open-market operations, its biggest-ever weekly fund injection, snapping a two-week run of net fund withdrawals that totalled 291 billion yuan.
The massive cash injection helped improve liquidity conditions in the domestic money market, which had become tight since last week as banks started preparing to meet their month-end capital requirements.