BEIJING -- The People's Bank of China, China's central bank, has injected 35 billion yuan ($5.7 billion) into the money market through open market operations, it announced on Thursday.

This is its first cash injection through reverse repurchase agreement (repo) operations in more than two months, with the last conducted on April 16.

The yield for the seven-day reverse repo stood at 2.7 percent, according to the central bank.

The injection came as small and medium-sized banks are seeing increasing demand for short-term capital amid mid-year financial supervision assessment pressure and large-cap stock issuance, the central bank said in a statement via its official account on the Twitter-like Sina Weibo.

The moderate liquidity injection will help stabilize market expectations and development of the monetary market, the statement said.