"The central bank will continue with the appropriately loose monetary policy while increasing the effectiveness of monetary policy," the Securities Times reported Vice-Governor Yi Gang as saying.
"The central bank will strengthen liquidity management while maintaining reasonably ample liquidity in the banking system."
He also said that banks will be "guided" to control the pace at which they extend credit to avoid volatility in lending, particularly at the end of quarters.
Yi said that consumer price and producer price inflation will be "moderately positive this year if economic policy is used properly."
His is the latest reiteration by a senior official of a policy stance that was originally adopted at the end of 2008 in the face of the global financial crisis.
But the PBOC has already started taking aggressive steps to manage interbank liquidity, raising the commercial bank reserve requirement on Monday for the first time since June 2008 and conducting a record drain via 28-day bond repurchase agreements last Tuesday.
The market still expects progressively tighter monetary policy, even though a central bank researcher denied any such actions at the weekend, calling the reserve hike a part of liquidity management only.
The central bank refrained from draining liquidity via 28-day repos from the interbank market on Tuesday, but only because they would have expired during next month's Chinese New Year holiday, traders said.
