Since then, the Bank has continued to supply whatever amounts of exchange settlement balances were necessary to keep the cash rate at the target. In the process, balances rose to a peak of $ billion in the middle of last week, the highest level for some years, though some of this has been reversed recently.
The Bank also skewed its market operations more towards bank bills, rather than government securities, to enhance confidence in the liquidity of highly-rated instruments in the bill market. 8  BIS Review 94/2007  Graph 9  The proportion of the Bank’s operations undertaken in bank bills has risen to around 80 per cent, well above the usual 30 per cent share.