Pan Gongsheng: The open market overnight repurchase rate will become the main policy interest rate

China News Service, Beijing, October 19th Pan Gongsheng, Governor of the Central Bank of China, stated at the 2026 Financial Street Forum Annual Meeting on the 19th that he will study and select opportunities to switch the duration of the central bank's main open market operations to overnight, and the open market overnight repurchase rate will accordingly become the main policy interest rate.

In recent years, the central bank has clarified the policy interest rate status of the 7-day reverse repurchase operation rate in the open market, increased the variety of overnight operations, and bought and sold treasury bonds in the open market. The monetary policy toolbox has been further enriched, and the market-oriented interest rate control mechanism has become clearer.

Pan Gongsheng said that judging from the current situation, the inter-bank overnight repurchase rate has actually become the target interest rate for the central bank's monetary policy control; but at the same time, the main varieties of the central bank's open market operations and the main policy interest rate period are still 7 days, and the two are not completely consistent. In order to further improve the accuracy of interest rate control, we will study and select opportunities to switch the duration of the central bank's main open market operations to overnight.

He also pointed out that it is necessary to promote the reform of loan interest rate pricing benchmarks and transform from a relatively simple reference to the loan market prime rate (LPR) pricing to a more diversified pricing benchmark. This meets the market’s diversified loan pricing needs and is also conducive to improving the transmission efficiency of monetary policy.

In addition, he mentioned that the benchmark interest rates for deposits and loans of financial institutions have not been adjusted for a long time since October 2015, and have actually no longer played a role in the pricing of deposits and loans. Currently, they are only used as the basis for calculating interest in a few judicial areas. The central bank will promote the replacement of interest calculation basis in these areas with market-based interest rate indicators to achieve the withdrawal of benchmark interest rates for deposits and loans of financial institutions.