The Chinese yuan is trading sideways on forex markets in the middle of the trading week as investors eye the financial industry’s move on the nation’s benchmark lending rate on Thursday. The yuan has been appreciating against the US dollar over the last three months on an improving economy, as well as the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) ostensibly tapering its aggressive stimulus efforts.

According to a Reuters survey of traders and analysts, Chinese officials are expected to leave the one-year loan prime rate (LPR) unchanged at 3.8% and the five-year LPR at 4.65%. Only three of the 31 respondents anticipate the one- and five-year LPR to come down by five basis points in August.

The LPR is China’s benchmark lending rate that has held steady for four consecutive months. It is set each month by 18 banks.

The poll comes soon after the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) announced that it injected $100.74 billion in maturing one-year medium-term lending facility (MLF) loans to banks. The central bank left these medium-term loans at 2.95% for the fourth straight months. The PBoC also confirmed in another statement that it pumped another $720 million through seven-day reverse repurchasing agreement to keep borrowing costs low.

In other monetary policy developments, new China Central Depository and Clearing data suggest the PBoC may have been buying government bonds from domestic financial institutions. Bloomberg analysts believe that the financial authorities scooped up approximately $28 billion in sovereign bonds in July. Experts say that the PBoC is trying to pump money into the real economy, while others think that it may have been a case of currency swap agreements.

On the data front, government and private sector manufacturing and non-manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) readings for August will be released.

The USD/CNY currency pair dipped 0.02% to 6.9207, from an opening of 6.9219, at 16:49 GMT on Wednesday. The EUR/CNY declined 0.46% to 8.2208, from an opening of 8.2594.