The European Central Bank would be prepared to enact more stimulus measures if necessary to increase liquidity in the euro area, ECB Governing Council member Luc Coene said.
Coene, who also heads Belgium’s central bank, held out the possibility that the targeted-loan program that the ECB announced in June wouldn’t be adequate to spur lending and stimulate the economy of the 18-nation euro area.
“If we estimate that it’s insufficient, inevitably we will add other instruments at our disposal to increase the balance sheet of the central bank, if it’s necessary,” Coene told a conference yesterday at Cercle de Lorraine in Brussels.
Banks borrowed a less-than-estimated 82.6 billion euros ($105 billion) as part of the Frankfurt-based ECB’s first TLTRO operation in September, possibly raising pressure on President Mario Draghi to implement widespread quantitative easing as he attempts to expand the central bank’s balance sheet by as much as 1 trillion euros.
Analysts estimated banks to borrow 100 billion euros to 300 billion euros in September, according to a Bloomberg survey. Coene said he considered September’s demand to be at predicted levels, and he expected it to be greater at the next operation in December.
“The fact that they didn’t take a lot seemed to us more or less foreseeable in the month of September,” Coene said. “I think there will be more pronounced demand for the December offering.”
bloomberg.com
Coene, who also heads Belgium’s central bank, held out the possibility that the targeted-loan program that the ECB announced in June wouldn’t be adequate to spur lending and stimulate the economy of the 18-nation euro area.
“If we estimate that it’s insufficient, inevitably we will add other instruments at our disposal to increase the balance sheet of the central bank, if it’s necessary,” Coene told a conference yesterday at Cercle de Lorraine in Brussels.
Banks borrowed a less-than-estimated 82.6 billion euros ($105 billion) as part of the Frankfurt-based ECB’s first TLTRO operation in September, possibly raising pressure on President Mario Draghi to implement widespread quantitative easing as he attempts to expand the central bank’s balance sheet by as much as 1 trillion euros.
Analysts estimated banks to borrow 100 billion euros to 300 billion euros in September, according to a Bloomberg survey. Coene said he considered September’s demand to be at predicted levels, and he expected it to be greater at the next operation in December.
“The fact that they didn’t take a lot seemed to us more or less foreseeable in the month of September,” Coene said. “I think there will be more pronounced demand for the December offering.”
bloomberg.com
No comments:
Post a Comment