The European Central Bank (ECB) has ramped up its asset purchase programme to the tune of €360bn (£257bn), its president Mario Draghi announced today.
The programme will now run until the end of March 2017 instead of September 2016 as initially planned, but will stay at a rate of €60bn. It will take the value of the programme up to €1.5 trillion from €1.1 trillion. The ECB also added regional government bonds to the list of eligible assets it can buy, so it can now buy the bonds of Paris or Milan local governments.
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Members of the ECB’s governing council also cut the central bank’s deposit rate to minus 0.3 per cent from minus 0.2 per cent today.
The euro immediately shot up to a value of 71.270p from 70.599p. The currency move suggests markets were disappointed, with many analysts expecting the deposit rate to be cut to minus 0.4 per cent.
