The purchase of government
bonds through a program of quantitative easing (QE) was "the
only tool left to deliver sufficient monetary stimulus," for the
struggling eurozone economy, according to minutes released
Thursday of the European Central Bank meeting where the program
was approved.
Existing ECB programs were "insufficient in quantity" said
the January 22 minutes.
The QE program unveiled by the ECB begins next month and
will be worth about 1.1 trillion euros, the bank estimates.
The minutes show that the ECB's governing council agreed
that "purchases of sovereign debt appeared to be the only
remaining instrument of sufficient scope to provide the
necessary monetary stimulus to deliver on the ECB's price
stability objective".
This marks the first time the ECB has publicly released
such a summary of governing council's discussion, according to
Bloomberg news.
Bank of Italy officials have said that Italy's economic
growth in the coming months should be "significantly higher than
its latest forecast," thanks to the QE policy.
The Italian central bank had previously forecast GDP growth
of 0.4% this year and 1.2% in 2016.
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