FRANKFURT:
The European Central Bank decided not to take any action at its meeting
on Thursday because economic and monetary conditions had not changed
enough to warrant it, ECB President Mario Draghi said.
The bank
left interest rates unchanged but also failed, as many had expected, to
suspend weekly operations to soak up money it spent on sovereign bonds
at the height of the euro zone debt crisis, known as sterilisation.
"The
suspension of sterilisation is one of the instruments that is in our
list but we didn't see any development in the money markets that would
lead to that unwanted tightening of monetary conditions that would
justify the use of this instrument," Draghi told a news conference.
He also said a survey of conditions showed no major changes to prompt any moves.
"We
saw our (economic) baseline by and large confirmed," he said. Pausing
the so-called sterilisation of the Securities Markets Programme (SMP)
would have added around 175 billion euros in liquidity to the market.
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