EUROPEAN Central Bank (ECB) President Mario Draghi said Friday that the bank had plenty of instruments at its disposal to push meager eurozone inflation levels higher and was both determined and willing to act.

    His comments at the World Economic Forum in Davos came a day after the ECB surprised markets by signaling a readiness to pursue further monetary easing at its next policy-setting meeting in March.

    Sharp falls in the price of oil, slowing growth in China and steep drops in financial markets have raised new questions about the strength of Europe’s economic recovery and the ECB’s ability to steer inflation back up to its target of close to but just below 2 percent.

    Speaking on a panel, Draghi’s colleague on the ECB board, Benoit Coeure defended the bank’s policies and communications strategy against criticism from former Bundesbank president Axel Weber, now chairman of Swiss bank UBS.

    Coeure said the ECB’s quantitative easing program was working, pointing to a “tremendous improvement” in the eurozone’s capital markets, and what he called an 80 basis point reduction in average funding costs for companies since the launch of the scheme.

    Draghi signaled Thursday, after the bank’s governing council left interest rates unchanged, that a further easing of ECB monetary policy was likely in March, telling a news conference that the policy-making council was unanimous in its determination to act.

    Asked in Davos about a financial market rout since the start of the year, he described it as “market vibrations, gyrations” and said it was premature to say that the global economic outlook had worsened as a consequence.(SD-Agencies)