Coming up soon is the People's Bank of China MLF rollover:
- PBOC MLF liquidity injection today - unchanged rate expected (but some expect a small cut)
- 700 billion yuan of this medium-term lending debt is maturing.
ING preview thoughts in brief:
- The consensus is for a pause at 2.75%. There could, however, be an extra liquidity injection on 1Y MLF volumes. One reason is that the Chinese New Year holiday is coming and liquidity is usually tight before this. But this is not certain, as the PBoC has already been injecting liquidity to cover the holiday period through open market operations. Another reason is that the PBoC could inject extra liquidity via the MLF at the beginning of the year rather than cutting the required reserve ratio to support what is usually strong loan growth in the first quarter. The market should perceive more liquidity injections as supportive measures for economic growth.
Lunar New Year holidays begin on January 21