ECB maintains its main refinancing rate at 0.00%, as expected

The European Central Bank (ECB) left its main refinancing rate unchanged at 0.00 percent on Thursday, as expected.

Its interest rates on the marginal lending facility and the deposit facility were also left unchanged at 0.25 percent and -0.50 percent, respectively.

In its policy statement, the ECB repeated the Governing Council expects its key interest rates to remain at their present or lower levels until it has seen the inflation outlook robustly converge to a level sufficiently close to, but below, 2% within its projection horizon, and such convergence has been consistently reflected in underlying inflation dynamics.

In addition, the European regulator also confirmed that net purchases will be restarted under the Governing Council’s asset purchase programme (APP) at a monthly pace of €20 billion as from 1 November. The decision was made at the September meeting. These purchases are expected to run for as long as necessary to reinforce the accommodative impact of its policy rates, and to end shortly before it starts raising the key ECB interest rates.

The Governing Council also said it intends to continue reinvesting, in full, the principal payments from maturing securities purchased under the APP for an extended period of time past the date when it starts raising the key ECB interest rates, and in any case for as long as necessary to maintain favourable liquidity conditions and an ample degree of monetary accommodation.