The bank’s interest statement stated that the board of directors believes that it is appropriate to conduct more monetary policy tightening operations and raise interest rates, and the data will be relied upon until the 2% inflation target is achieved in the medium term.
The Board also decided its intention to continue reinvesting the principal payments from the outstanding securities purchased under the APP program for an extended period of time after the date on which the Bank will start raising interest rates.
Less than an hour from now, attention is turning towards the meeting of European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde to answer journalists’ questions. The euro against the US dollar rose more than 50 pips to trade now at 1.0250 levels before the press conference.