The People's Bank of China (PBC), the central bank, on Wednesday continued to pump cash into the financial system through open market operations to maintain liquidity in the market.

A total of 240 billion yuan (about 34.8 billion US dollars) was injected into the financial market via the medium-term lending facility (MLF), the central bank said in an online statement.

The funds will mature in one year at an interest rate of 3.3 percent.

The MLF tool was introduced in 2014 to help commercial and policy banks maintain liquidity by allowing them to borrow from the central bank using securities as collateral.

The PBC also conducted 40 billion yuan of 14-day reverse repo, a liquidity-injecting process in which the central bank purchases securities from commercial banks through bidding, with an agreement to sell them back in the future.

The interest rate for the operation stood at 2.7 percent.

The moves aimed to ensure stable liquidity in the middle of the year, the statement said.

Meanwhile, 15 billion yuan of reverse repos and 200 billion yuan of MLF matured on Wednesday.

China vowed to keep its prudent monetary policy "neither too tight nor too loose" while maintaining market liquidity at a reasonably ample level in 2019.