BEIJING - The People's Bank of China, the central bank, on Friday skipped reverse repo for the 31st trading day, the longest stretch since early 2016, citing sufficient liquidity in the banking system.

No reverse repo will mature Friday.

A reverse repo is a process by which the central bank purchases securities from commercial banks through bidding, with an agreement to sell them back in the future.

Friday's interbank market showed the overnight Shanghai Interbank Offered Rate (Shibor), which measures the cost at which banks lend to one another, dipped slightly to 2.416 percent. The Shibor rate for one-month loans rose 1.8 basis points to 2.828 percent.

China has decided to maintain a prudent and neutral monetary policy in 2018.

The country vowed to maintain control over the floodgates of monetary supply and keep liquidity at a reasonable and ample level, according to a statement issued after a meeting of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee in July.