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China will maintain its prudent monetary policy and a stable leverage ratio and will not adopt "flood-irrigation stimulus" plans, Yi Gang, governor of the People's Bank of China (PBC), the country's central bank, told a press conference on Tuesday. 

Over the past 40 years, China has continuously improved its monetary policy structure, shifting from direct to indirect policy instruments by canceling credit scale limitation and establishing social, overall financing indicators as an important reference for monetary policy, Yi said during a press conference on the celebration of the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China.

Meanwhile, the PBC has devised a slew of measures to meet economic performance requirements through open market operations, and monetary policy tools like the reserve ratio rate and the rediscount rate. The central bank has also been deepening interest rate reform while establishing monetary policy and macro prudent policy as two major regulation structures.

China has also largely established an opening-up system valuing fair competition, and the market has been opening up to financial sectors such as banking, securities and insurances. "The stock ratio limit will be fully liberalized next year," Yi said, noting that the number of foreign banks has grown to 989. 

Since 1994, both the nominal effective exchange rate and the real effective exchange rate of the Chinese yuan have seen obvious appreciation, and both capital account convertible and partially convertible items exceed 90 percent, the central bank's governor noted. 

Additionally, after the yuan formally joined the IMF Special Drawing Rights basket, the yuan's settlement, trading and reserve functions have been significantly enhanced while China has played a responsible role in international exchange and cooperation to enhance the voices of developing countries in international economic and financial governance.

When asked about whether PBC will cut reserve requirement ratio (RRR) to confront the economic downward pressure, Yi said “unlike central banks in other countries, we are not in a rush to adopt large quantitative easing or RRR cuts,” noting that it's important to cherish the monetary policy and maintain normal policy arrange as long as possible.

And dealing with the economic headwinds, China still has room in monetary and fiscal policy, Yi said.

Global Times