In line with market expectations, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) cut the borrowing rate of its one-year medium-term lending facility (MLF) for the first time in 10 months to strengthen counter-cyclical adjustment and shore up a shaky economic recovery.

The MLF tool helps commercial and policy banks maintain liquidity by allowing them to borrow from the central bank using securities as collateral.

China’s central bank cut the interest rate by 10 basis points (bps) from 2.75% to 2.65%. This comes after PBOC lowered the seven-day reverse repo rate from 2% to 1.9% and the overnight rate of the standard lending facility by 10 basis points to 2.75% earlier this week.

With 200 billion yuan ($27.93 billion) worth of MLF loans set to expire this month, the bank injected 37 billion yuan ($5.17 billion) of MLF and 2 billion yuan ($279.14 million) through seven-day reverse repos.

These moves aim to keep liquidity reasonable and ample in the banking system to satisfy the needs of financial institutions fully and signal the authority’s increasing concern about the economy’s fragility. Activity data released on Thursday morning was expected to point to further weakness.