BEIJING - China's central bank Monday injected cash into the inter-bank market via reverse repos.

The People's Bank of China pumped 300 billion yuan (about $46 billion) into the financial system via a process by which the central bank purchases securities from commercial banks through bidding with an agreement to sell them back in the future.

The operations included 280 billion yuan seven-day reverse repos priced to yield 2.45 percent and 20 billion yuan of 28-day contracts with a yield of 2.75 percent.

In Monday's interbank market, the benchmark overnight Shanghai Interbank Offered Rate, which measures the cost at which Chinese banks lend to each other, stood at 2.756 percent, 6.02 basis points higher than Friday.

The central bank has increasingly relied on open market operations for liquidity management, rather than cuts in interest rates or reserve requirement ratios.

China set the tone of its monetary policy in 2017 as prudent and neutral, keeping appropriate liquidity levels but avoiding excessive liquidity injections.