ECB leaves its main refinancing rate at 0.00%, as widely expected

The European Central Bank (ECB) remained its main refinancing rate unchanged at 0.00 percent on Thursday, as widely 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 said that it will continue to make net purchases under its asset purchase programme (APP) at a monthly pace of €20 billion. 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 ECB also repeated that 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.

It was also announced that further details about the review of the ECB's monetary policy strategy would be released today at 14:30 GMT.