Xinhua, Washington :
The European Central Bank (ECB) is ready to take additional monetary stimulus to fend off the threat of deflation in the eurozone if needed, ECB President Mario Draghi said Thursday.
“Let me be clear: we are accountable to the European people for delivering price stability, which today means lifting inflation from its excessively low level. And we will do exactly that,” Draghi said at the Brookings Institution in Washington D.C.
The ECB governing council is “unanimous in its commitment to take additional unconventional measures to address the risks of a too prolonged period of low inflation,” Draghi reiterated, adding that “we are ready to alter the size and/or the composition of our unconventional interventions, and therefore of our balance sheet, as required.”
Draghi’s remarks sent a strong signal that the ECB is willing to launch large-scale government bond buying programs, also known as quantitative easing, to prevent the eurozone from falling into deflation. Annual inflation rate in the eurozone dropped to 0.3 percent in September, a five-year low and far below the central bank’s target of just below 2 percent.
The ECB has recently rolled out a series of measures to add more stimulus to the economy, including the targeted long-term refinancing operations and new programs to purchase outright asset- backed securities and covered bonds.
With these asset purchase programs, “we are transitioning from a monetary policy framework predominantly founded on passive provision of central bank credit to a more active and controlled management of our balance sheet. We expect our measures to have a sizeable impact on our balance sheet,” Draghi noted.
