The European Central Bank must stand ready to lower borrowing costs to “slightly below” 2 per cent as global trade wars threaten to drag down consumer prices, a top official has said.
“If I look at the economy — the shocks we are confronted with and the uncertainty on growth — it might warrant to be mildly supportive,” Belgium’s central bank governor Pierre Wunsch told the Financial Times in an interview ahead of the ECB’s next meeting on June 5.
This could imply lowering the central bank’s key deposit facility rate to “slightly below 2 per cent”, he said. The ECB has lowered its benchmark interest rate seven times since June from 4 per cent to 2.25 per cent.