SHANGHAI/SINGAPORE: China's central bank left a key policy rate unchanged as expected on Monday when rolling over maturing medium-term loans, and drained some funds from the banking system.

The People's Bank of China (PBOC) said it was keeping the rate on 182 billion yuan ($25.08 billion) worth of one-year medium-term lending facility (MLF) loans to some financial institutions unchanged at 2.50% from the previous operation.

In a Reuters poll of 31 market watchers, 30, or 97%, of all respondents expected the PBOC to leave the interest rate on MLF rate unchanged.

With 237 billion yuan worth of MLF loans set to expire this month, the operation resulted a net 55 billion yuan fresh fund withdrawal from the banking system.

The central bank also injected 4 billion yuan through seven-day reverse repos while keeping borrowing cost unchanged at 1.80%, it said in an online statement.

 - Reuters