THE European Central Bank (ECB) is satisfied with the effects of its bond buying program on the economy and inflation and has no intention of ending it prematurely, ECB executive board member Yves Mersch said late Sunday.

    In March, the ECB started buying 60 billion euros (US$78 billion) worth of eurozone government bonds a month to inject more cash into the economy and reverse a trend of falling prices.

    “We have stopped the negative bank lending rates and are starting to get new credit into the economy through the banking system,” Mersch told Luxembourg radio.

    “We also have an effect on inflation, because at the same time there was a risk that Europe would slip into deflation,” he said.

    He said that while cyclical factors in the economy also played a part, “at the ECB we are quite satisfied, that we have taken the right measures at the right time and that is probably why they were more effective.”

    The ECB’s bond buying programme is set to last at least until September 2016, but some economists have speculated that given its early positive effects, the bank may be tempted to cut it short. Mersch said there were no such plans.

    “We have based all our previsions on a projection where we see that growth is picking up, that inflation is getting closer to the inflation target, and that would be the case if we bought 60 billion every month,” he said.

    (SD-Agencies)