国内英语新闻: 315 bln yuan of reverse repo contracts to mature this week

BEIJING, Feb. 19 (Xinhua) -- Altogether 315 billion yuan (about 46 billion U.S. dollars) of reverse repo contracts are set to mature in China's money market this week, a sharp retreat from the volume seen a week earlier that will ease pressure on central bank's open market operations.

In the past week, 900 billion yuan of reverse repos, a process by which the central bank purchases securities from banks through bidding with an agreement to sell them back in the future, matured, putting liquidity strain on the market.

To ease the cash crunch, China's central bank made net cash injection via open market operations on Feb. 16 and Feb. 17.

For policy moves this week, analysts expect the central bank to take steps to maintain stable liquidity in the market.

The central bank reiterated Friday in a quarterly report that it will implement a prudent and neutral monetary policy while keeping liquidity basically stable.

It pledged to strike a better balance between stabilizing growth, adjusting structure, curbing asset bubbles and preventing risks, so as to provide a "neutral and moderate" monetary environment for supply-side structural reform.