AFP, Frankfurt Am Main :
The European Central Bank will hold to its course at its first meeting of 2017 Thursday, analysts said, resisting clamour to tighten monetary policy from critics pointing to increasing inflation.
Since December’s meeting of the ECB’s Governing Council, when it extended mass bond-buying from March to December 2017, price increases in the 19-nation single currency area have picked up.
The increase to 1.1 percent from 0.6 average inflation across the eurozone in December still leaves the indicator well short of the ECB’s target of just below 2.0.
Opponents of the bank’s ultra-loose monetary policy-which also includes historic low interest rates and cheap loans to banks-nevertheless quickly called on the ECB to wind it down.
“It would probably be right if the ECB starts daring to head for the exit this year,” German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said in a newspaper interview last week.
With above-average inflation of 1.7 percent in Europe’s largest economy, German economists and commentators have been the loudest voices calling for a rise in interest rates and an end to the ECB’s mass bond-buying.
