BEIJING — China's central bank Thursday suspended open market operations for a tenth trading day in a row, citing a relatively high level of liquidity in the banking system.

With 70 billion yuan ($10.3 billion) of reverse repos maturing Thursday, the same amount of cash was drained from the market by the People's Bank of China (PBOC).

The liquidity level in the banking system is relatively high as abundant liquidity in the financial system offsets maturing reverse repos, the PBOC said in a statement explaining its suspension of open market operations.

In Thursday's interbank market, the benchmark overnight Shanghai Interbank Offered Rate (Shibor), the cost at which Chinese banks lend to one another, dropped by 3.57 basis points to 2.5473 percent.

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