China's central bank rolled over maturing medium-term policy loans while keeping the interest rate unchanged for a second month on Monday, reinforcing expectations that conditions will continue to stay loose to help the pandemic-hit economy.

The People's Bank of China (PBOC) kept the rate on 500 billion yuan ($69.6 billion) worth of one-year medium-term lending facility (MLF) loans to some financial institutions at 2.75%, unchanged from the previous operation.Monday's liquidity injection was to "keep banking system liquidity reasonably ample" and to "fully meet financial institutional demand," the PBOC said in an online statement.

With the same amount of such loans maturing on Monday, the operation resulted in no injection or withdrawal of medium-term liquidity on a net basis from the banking system.

Previously, the PBOC drained a net 200 billion yuan each in August and September.

In a poll of 27 market watchers conducted last week, all respondents forecast no change to the MLF rate, with the vast majority of them expecting a partial rollover.