BEIJING, Feb 16 — China’s overnight money-market rate fell for the first time in seven days as the biggest central bank cash injections in a year helped meet pre-holiday demand.

The one-day repurchase rate, a gauge of interbank funding availability, dropped four basis points, or 0.04 percentage point, to 3.26 per cent, according to a daily fixing released by the National Interbank Funding Centre at 11am in Shanghai.

The People’s Bank of China pumped a net 205 billion yuan (RM117.4 billion) into the banking system last week, the most since January 2014. That added to a total of 195 billion yuan additions in the previous three weeks. Demand for cash usually increases ahead of the week-long Lunar New Year holidays, which starts February 18 this year.

“With banks having hoarded enough cash for the holiday, liquidity is expected to ease substantially,” said Chen Kang, a Shanghai-based analyst at SWS Research Ltd, a unit of Shenwan Hongyuan Group Co. “The worst is behind us.”

New share sales by 24 companies locked up an estimated 2.05 trillion yuan last week, according to a Bloomberg survey, further boosting demand for funds.

The cost of one-year interest-rate swaps, the fixed payment to receive the floating seven-day repo rate, rose one basis point to 3.2 per cent as of 4.46pm in Shanghai, data compiled by Bloomberg show. The yield on the government bonds due September 2024 climbed two basis point to 3.36 per cent, according to National Interbank Funding Center prices. — Bloomberg