First, the continuous expansion of the central bank's bill function: structural tightening of liquidity
Judging from the development of central bank bills, the issuance of central bank bills in China began on September 24, 2002, and the central bank converted the unexpired 65.438+093.75 billion yuan into 654.38+09 central bank bills with the same term. At that time, the key motivation of the central bank to launch such central bank bills was to increase the operating tools of open market business to hedge foreign exchange holdings; At the same time, in view of the current underdeveloped inter-bank bond market and the serious shortage of short-term bonds, measures have been taken.
With the development of China's financial market, central bank bills are still in the process of continuous expansion and extension, from the initial open market operation function to regulating the fluctuation of money market and determining the benchmark interest rate. The relative importance of these different functions in different periods is also different. For example, with the exchange rate reform, the sterilization function of central bank bills may be weakened, but the function of ironing out money market fluctuations and determining benchmark interest rates may still be maintained.
On the basis of the above functions, the directional central bank bills actually continue to expand, mainly for the function of structural tightening liquidity. This is related to the current distribution structure of excess liquidity. Judging from the distribution of liquidity, the current phenomenon of excess liquidity in financial markets does not generally exist in all banks. Through structural analysis, it can be seen that the liquidity of banks with different scales and properties is inconsistent at present. From the analysis of the statistical data in the first quarter, the loan-to-deposit ratio index reflecting liquidity is 69.86% in the whole banking industry, 74.54% in loan-to-deposit ratio, a small and medium-sized bank including joint-stock banks and city commercial banks, and 65. 18% in loan-to-deposit ratio, a national bank including state-owned commercial banks, indicating that excess liquidity is actually more reflected in the state-owned commercial banking system. To a great extent, the low loan-to-deposit ratio of state-owned banks is related to the fact that they are in the stage of joint-stock reform and restructuring, extremely cautious lending behavior, and the constraints of capital adequacy ratio. However, with the deepening of the system reform of state-owned commercial banks or the completion of restructuring and listing, this situation may change greatly. The reason is that the impact of capital constraints on credit behavior is reduced through listing financing. Correspondingly, as a public bank, there will also be profit pressure. Investors can't tolerate the long-term continuous investment of listed commercial banks in low-yield money markets, nor can they tolerate the continuous high capital adequacy ratio. In this new situation, it can be expected that the sufficient liquidity and relatively sufficient capital of state-owned banks after the completion of the shareholding system reform and listing will inevitably promote commercial banks to issue loans more actively, which is illustrated by the relatively rapid credit growth of China Construction Bank since 2006. In this context, the effectiveness of regulators to curb credit growth through window guidance will be reduced, so capital constraints will be softened under the conditions of continuous sufficient liquidity and rapid capital replenishment. China Construction Bank's 2005 annual report shows that its loan growth rate is relatively slow. At the end of 2005, the loan balance of CCB was 2,458.4 billion yuan, the growth rate was only 10.4%, which was far lower than the average level of the banking industry and the asset growth rate. However, in 2006, the credit growth of China Construction Bank accelerated significantly. With the smooth progress and completion of the joint-stock reform and listing of Bank of China and Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, it is expected that there may be a similar trend in credit investment behavior. Therefore, judging from the future development trend, the current financial market pattern of "wide money and tight credit" is likely to change to "wide money and wide credit", so it is necessary to adopt corresponding structural tightening policies for these banks with sufficient liquidity.
Judging from the economic and financial operation since this year, the characteristics of sufficient liquidity are still obvious. At the end of April, the broad money M2 increased by 18.9%, 4.8 percentage points higher than the same period of last year, and maintained the growth rate of 18% for four consecutive months, which was higher than the expected target of 16% set at the beginning of the year. RMB loans from financial institutions grew rapidly. In the first four months, RMB loans from financial institutions increased by nearly10.6 trillion yuan, an increase of 879.7 billion yuan year-on-year, which achieved more than 60% of the expected target for the whole year.
In fact, the central bank has raised the benchmark interest rate on April 28th. Considering that this measure is mainly from the perspective of restraining the demand for funds, it will not have a direct impact on liquidity in the banking system, and the policy effect also has a certain time lag.
At present, liquidity in the banking system is still loose, the excess deposit reserve ratio is around 3%, and the pressure on commercial banks to use funds is great, which is not conducive to curbing the excessive growth of credit. It can be said that sufficient liquidity has continued to be sufficient in the first quarter since April. Taking the overall liquidity analysis at the end of the first quarter as an example, according to rough statistics, it was 65.438+0.765.438+0.65438+0 billion yuan in 2004, 993.9 billion yuan in 2005 and 65.438+0.922 billion yuan in 2006. At the end of the first quarter of 2005, the overall liquidity decreased by 8.4% year-on-year, but at the end of the first quarter of 2006, it increased by 928.6 billion yuan year-on-year, with an increase rate of 93.4%. Therefore, it is necessary to increase the liquidity impact in time. This time, the central bank issued 654.38+000 billion yuan of central bank bills to some commercial banks. The fundamental policy goal is to control the progress of credit issuance of commercial banks, curb the excessive growth of money and credit in time, and hedge sufficient liquidity to some extent. Since the first quarter of 2006, the central bank has stepped up the operation of the open market. In the first quarter, the total amount of money put in and returned reached 654.38+06, 96.5438+03 billion yuan and 26.5438+04.23 billion yuan respectively, and the net amount of money returned in the current period was 45.65438+00 billion yuan. However, the momentum of excess liquidity has not been curbed. Although the credit growth reached the "peak" of 1.26 trillion yuan in the first quarter, the difference between bank deposits and loans showed an expanding trend.
Second, the basic characteristics and functions of directional issuance of central bank bills
This time, the central bank issued a total of 1 0 billion yuan of central bank bills, with a term of1year and an issue interest rate of 2. 1 138%, which was discounted by means of fixed-rate bidding and was issued to commercial banks with rapid loan growth and abundant funds. The interest rate of directional central bank bills issued in this issue is close to the interest rate of central bank bills issued in April with the same term, but slightly lower than the latest issue, which reflects a certain punishment and warning effect. In order to freeze liquidity, the directional issuance of central bank bills in this issue is not circulated in the secondary market, and it cannot be transferred or mortgaged without the consent of the central bank, which reflects the policy goal and intention of tightening liquidity.
According to the main central bank bill issuance plan at the beginning of 2006, in principle, the central bank issues 1 year central bank bill every Tuesday and 3-month central bank bill every Thursday. At the same time, according to the plan and the needs of monetary policy, the central bank can also flexibly choose other trading tools and maturity varieties. This directional central bank bill is produced under this background.
Generally speaking, when issuing central bank bills in a market-oriented way, the central bank will usually issue them in an open market business by bidding for all primary dealers. First-class dealers decide their own bidding price and subscription quantity according to their respective liquidity conditions and asset management needs, and finally determine the issuance price of central bank bills according to the principle of price priority. In order to stabilize market expectations, the central bank also issued central bank bills through quantity bidding. Of course, according to the relevant operating rules, the central bank can issue central bank bills according to the needs of currency regulation. The central bank selects some primary dealers in the open market business, reaches an agreement with them on the communication of the issue quantity and the issue price, and then issues central bank bills to them by directional bidding at the agreed time.
Judging from the current situation, compared with the market-oriented issuance of central bank bills, the directional issuance of central bank bills contains certain policy signals, and the issuance interest rate is usually slightly lower than that of the market-oriented central bank bills of the same period at that time to reflect the warning function. Directed issuance of central bank bills is usually enabled under certain circumstances according to the needs of currency regulation, and market-oriented issuance of central bank bills is still the most important regulation tool in the current situation.
In terms of the total amount, the directional issuance of 654.38 billion yuan of central bank bills is equivalent to raising the deposit reserve ratio by 0.4 percentage points, which plays a role in freezing liquidity for a long time; Structurally, the directional issuance of central bank bills is conducive to the rationalization of liquidity distribution, and at the same time can avoid the impact that the "one size fits all" increase in the deposit reserve ratio may bring to the market. This can not only serve as a warning to institutions with rapid credit growth, but also recover the liquidity in the banking system in time and quickly, which is conducive to alleviating the situation of excessive growth of money and credit to some extent.
Third, further monetary policy actions may have to wait for macroeconomic data from May to June, but the tone of hedging liquidity should be the same.
At present, the macro-economic situation facing China can easily be compared with the macro-control situation in 2003. Perhaps there are some similarities between 2003 and 2006 in terms of economic growth, price and investment growth, but the macro-control pattern in 2006 is still different from that in 2004. In 2004, China's economic growth was restricted by a series of "bottlenecks". At that time, the supply of steel and electricity was seriously insufficient, and prices rose rapidly. However, at present, only two provinces are short of electricity, and there is a certain excess of steel production capacity. In 2004, the consumer price and the price index of means of production both rose, facing inflationary pressure. At present, CPI is still in a downward trend, and the investment growth as soon as possible is mainly in a few industries such as infrastructure and real estate, while other industrial sectors are under pressure to reduce corporate profit margins. Most importantly, the power from the market has played a more important role in the economic operation. Judging from the current macro-control policy operation, the policy tone is basically the idea of "market-oriented fine-tuning", adopting the method of observation, decision-making and fine-tuning, rather than adopting administrative policy measures that have a great shock and influence on the market. Therefore, the next policy action mainly depends on the statistics from May to June.
At the same time, in order to give full play to its liquidity hedging function, central bank bills must be constantly innovated, especially emphasizing the reasonable combination of central bank bills and other monetary policy tools, such as exploring the reasonable combination of central bank bills and open market operating tools such as deposit reserve and differential deposit reserve, so as to enhance the ability of quantity control. Otherwise, relying solely on central bank bills will have limited policy effect and bring a series of negative effects.