Central bank to use policy tools to help small firms

To provide accurate liquidity support for China's small and micro enterprises, the People's Bank of China will leverage a basket of policy tools this year, Yi Gang, the central bank's governor, said in an interview.

The basket, Yi said, includes targeted reserve requirement ratio cuts, relending and rediscounting and the targeted medium-term lending facility, Xinhua News Agency reported late on Wednesday. "The first TMLF operation will be implemented in late January," he said.

Yi also pledged to "help ease the finance strain of some private enterprises through a full use of credit, bonds and equity financing".