AFP, Frankfurt :
European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi on Thursday offered a more upbeat assessment of economic recovery in the eurozone, while leaving interest rates and massive bond-buying to support growth and inflation unchanged.
“Growth is improving, things are going better. You remember in 2013 we were speaking of a recovery which was fragile and uneven, and now it’s solid and broad,” Draghi told journalists in Frankfurt.
He also made a “tentative” suggestion that “perhaps the risk of trade protectionism may have somewhat receded,” after meeting with officials from the administration of Donald Trump-elected on an “America First” platform railing against globalisation-in Washington last week.
Central bank governors had earlier left key interest rates at historic lows and mass bond-buying unchanged, in line with observers’ expectations.
The Frankfurt institution kept its main refinancing rate at 0.0 percent, the rate on the marginal lending facility at 0.25 percent, and the deposit rate at – 0.4 percent-meaning banks have to pay to park money with the central bank.
It also left untouched plans to buy 60 billion euros of corporate and government bonds per month until December under its “quantitative easing” programme.
The bank’s interventions are designed to encourage banks to lend to the real economy, powering growth and pushing inflation towards its target of just below 2.0 percent.
But while policymakers see a firming recovery in the 19-nation eurozone, inflation fell back to 1.5 percent in March after briefly overshooting the goal in February.
Just minutes after the ECB’s decision, Germany reported that its inflation rate had outstripped the central bank target again, reaching 2.0 percent in April.
Politicians and economists in Europe’s largest economy have long clamoured for the bank to wind down its monetary support, which they say harms German banks and savers.
