–Adds Comments On Government Bond Purchases By ECB
FRANKFURT (MNI) – The European Central Bank has no immediate plans
for further interest rate cuts, ECB Governing Council member Ewald
Nowotny said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal Deutschland
published on Tuesday.
The ECB has taken “significant steps” both as regards liquidity
provision and lowering borrowing costs, Nowotny said. “We now have a
consensus that we should…let these measure take full effect. Only
after that will we take additional decisions.”
Nowotny, who heads the Austrian National Bank, reminded that the
ECB never precommits, but “currently there are no specific plans,” he
said.
He said the ECB stands ready to take additional unconventional
measures should deflationary risks emerge, and he would not exclude the
possibility of quantitative easing.
“It is our job to prevent a deviation from price stability both to
the upside and to the downside and to use the appropriate instruments
[to achieve this]. Which specific ones those may be, depends from case
to case,” he said.
Nowotny said that the ECB is “discussing possible alternatives” to
the government bond buy program, SMP, but he said that discussions are
at early stages and the SMP cannot be dispensed with now.
Nowotny declined to reveal details of discussion. “This is a
discussion that encompasses the entire monetary policy spectrum,” he
said.
At a conference in Vienna today, Nowotny confirmed that the ECB is
examining alternatives to SMP but once again declined to discuss any
details.
–Frankfurt newsroom +49 69 72 01 42; e-mail: jtreeck@marketnews.com
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