-Mario Draghi, ECB Governor
The European Central Bank will start its quantitative easing programme as soon as next Monday, March 9, Mario Draghi, central bank Governor announced on Thursday. The central bank also decided to leave the benchmark interest rate unchanged at a record low of 0.05%. In addition to that, the central bank revised downwards its inflation outlook for the currency bloc for this year due to persistent decline in oil prices. The ECB now expects consumer inflation to be flat in 2015, a downward revision from a December forecast of 0.7%. As for 2016, the inflation outlook was revised higher to 1.5% against 1.3% estimated previously, reflecting expectations for the oil rout to wind down. Looking ahead, in 2017, the ECB sees inflation at 1.8% - close, but still below the central bank's goal of near but just below 2%. At the same time, the ECB has become more optimistic on economic growth outlook. The central bank revised its GDP growth projection to 1.5% in 2015 up from 1.0% estimated in December and 1.9% in 2016, compared with 1.5% in the December estimate. Meanwhile, 2017 growth is forecast at 2.1%.
Draghi also said that the ECB injected additional 500 million euros to the Emergency Liquidity Assistance (ELA), bringing the total size of the 'window' to 68.8 billion euros.
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