The People's Bank of China (PBOC), China's central bank, issued 15 billion yuan (2.25 billion U.S. dollars) of three-month bills through its open market operations Thursday at an unchanged yield of 1.7726 percent.

The central bank did not conduct repurchase agreements operations Thursday, the first time it has skipped repo operations since July 22.

The PBOC typically enters repo agreements every Thursday when three-month bills mature.

On Tuesday, the PBOC sold 51 billion yuan (7.62 billion U.S. dollars) of one-year bills.

Taking into account the 65.5 billion yuan (9.82 billion U.S. dollars) of bills and repurchase agreements that matured this week, the PBOC drained 500 million yuan (75 million U.S. dollars) of liquidity from the money market through its open market operations this week.

In the previous two weeks, the PBOC drained 123 billion yuan (18.44 billion U.S. dollars) from the money market.