China's central bank said on Wednesday that it lent 367.50 billion yuan ($57.79 billion) to financial institutions via its medium-term lending facility (MLF) in April. Outstanding MLF was reduced to 4.017 trillion yuan at the end of April compared with 4.917 trillion yuan a month earlier, the People's Bank of China said in a statement on its website.
The difference in the outstanding MLFs, with a total value of 900 billion yuan, came from released liquidity after a reduction in banks' reserve requirements (RRR). The PBOC said its reduced requirements for bank reserves, which came into effect on April 25, released a total of almost 1.3 trillion yuan, out of which 900 billion yuan had been used by the banks to repay their respective outstanding MLF, according to the statement. It added that 156 billion yuan in outstanding MLF loans will be due this month.