SYDNEY- Australia’s central bank on Monday projected its A$600-billion ($423.66 billion) balance sheet would remain large for some years to come as bonds it bought under quantitative easing slowly mature and repeated it had no plans to sell its holdings early.
Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) Assistant Governor Christopher Kent said only around A$4 billion of bonds were maturing this year, with another A$13 billion in 2023.
Maturities would then range from around A$35 billion to A$47 billion a year out to 2031, before tailing off by 2033, Kent told a KangaNews bond conference.
The A$188 billion lent to commercial banks under the Term Funding Facility, another emergency stimulus program begun in 2020, will also be paid in 2023 and 2024, further shrinking the size of the RBA’s balance sheet.
Much of the extra cash created by the QE program is held by the banks in their exchange settlement (ES) accounts at the RBA, which currently amount to about A$439 billion.
