SHANGHAI/SINGAPORE, Aug 17 (Reuters) - China's yuan moves are broadly consistent with short-term economic fundamentals as well as the market's demand and supply dynamics, a state-owned newspaper said on late Wednesday.
The remarks by the Financial News, a newspaper backed by the People's Bank of China (PBOC), come at a time the Chinese yuan faces rising depreciation pressure.
The onshore yuan has lost about 5.5% against the U.S. dollar so far this year and is one of the worst performing Asian currencies in 2023, pressured by widening yield differentials with other major economies and a faltering economic recovery.
"Yuan fluctuations have picked up recently, but yuan movements are relatively consistent with domestic short-term fundamentals and market supply and demand," the newspaper said citing industry experts.
"The market has not seen a panicked unilateral move, and recent movements are normal market volatilities."
Yield differentials between China and the U.S. widened to their highest in 16 years, as investors speculated that China's central bank would ease monetary policy further after a surprise rate cut this week, even if it puts the yuan under more pressure.
China has recently ramped up efforts to support the yuan by persistently setting stronger-than-expected midpoint fixing, with investors interpreting it as an official effort to rein in weakness.
Market watchers expect the authorities to roll out more policy measures if rapid yuan losses continue.
"Promoting growth remains the priority, and we expect the PBOC to follow up with more measures to slow the depreciation trend in the next few weeks," analysts at Goldman Sachs said in a note this week.
They said such measure could include more significant counter-cyclical factors in the daily yuan midpoint fixing, cutting the FX deposit reserve requirement ratio, and adding FX forward sales reserve requirement.
(Reporting by Winni Zhou and Tom Westbrook Editing by Shri Navaratnam)
