The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) cut the required reserve ratio (RRR) for financial institutions by another 50 basis points as of Dec. 15 and has now cut it by 1 percentage point this year following a similar cut in July.
PBOC said the move should release 1.2 trillion yuan of liquidity, slightly more than the cut in July that released 1 trillion.
The weighted average RRR for financial institutions will be 8.4 percent after the cut, down from 8.9 percent previously, and prior to the cut the RRR for large financial institutions was 10.5 percent.
PBOC said it would continue to implement “a sound monetary policy,” and would “keep liquidity adequate at a reasonable level, and keep the growth of money supply and the aggregate financing to the real economy (AFRE) basically in line with the nominal GDP growth.
PBOC often uses the reserve ratio to stimulate economic activity and in 2020 the bank’s first move to ease policy at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic was to cut the ratio for large financial institutions in January after which large amounts of liquidity was injected.

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