The People's Bank of China (PBOC), the central bank, said on Wednesday evening that it will still issue a total of 120 billion yuan three-year bills in an open auction this week having primary dealers offering yields, the 21st Century Business Herald reported Thursday.

The PBOC on Tuesday asked financial companies not to add to the amounts or change yields of their bids for the three-year bills, which aroused guesses that the central bank might fix the yield in the issuance.

An ample liquidity in the market and reduced demand for long-term credit led to banks' growing pursuit of three-year bills due to its terms and yield.

Since the central bank resumed the bi-weekly auction of three-year bills on April 9 for the first time since June 2008, the size of the issue kept increasing, from 15 billion yuan to 90 billion yuan to 110 billion yuan, and reached 120 billion. Some organizations even predicted the demand for the three-year bills might reach 200 billion, the report said.

Since the central bank kept lowering bill yields, the banks made their bids for the three-year bills at a yield of around 2.57 percent on Wednesday, from the 2.65 percent on Tuesday, and many banks offered a yield of between 2.6 percent and 2.65 percent during the auction, according to the newspaper.

Meanwhile, the central bank will issue 6 billion yuan worth of three-month bills on Thursday. As the monetary authority did not sell repos on Tuesday, and if it continued to do so on Thursday, it will have a net withdrawal of 51 billion yuan with 95 billion yuan bills maturing this week.

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