Published by Global Banking & Finance Review®
Posted on December 13, 2024
1 min readLast updated: January 27, 2026
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ECB's Mario Centeno forecasts gradual rate cuts to ease restrictive levels, aiming for around 2% in upcoming quarters.
LISBON (Reuters) - European Central Bank policymaker Mario Centeno predicted on Friday further gradual interest rate cuts in the coming quarters to ease what remains a 'restrictive rate level' to around 2%.
He said Thursday's decision to cut the ECB-POLICY-3fdc7763-f2c0-4c30-b494-8614852eaf43>ECB-POLICY-KAZIMIR-00b06d9b-4b99-46ce-a2aa-458d8eb2d993>ECB-POLICY-3fdc7763-f2c0-4c30-b494-8614852eaf43>ECB's key rate by 0.25 percentage points to 3% was 'fortunately absolutely consensual'.
"In the future, the expectation is that the restrictiveness of interest rates will be reduced," Centeno, who is also governor of the Bank of Portugal, told a briefing, adding that monetary policy should be normalised in a few quarters' time, with rates close to 2%, if no new shocks materialise.
The ECB-POLICY-3fdc7763-f2c0-4c30-b494-8614852eaf43>ECB-POLICY-KAZIMIR-00b06d9b-4b99-46ce-a2aa-458d8eb2d993>ECB-POLICY-3fdc7763-f2c0-4c30-b494-8614852eaf43>ECB cut the key deposit rate for the fourth time this year on Thursday, and kept the door open to more easing as the euro zone economy is dragged down by political instability at home and the threat of a fresh U.S. trade war.
(Reporting by Sergio Goncalves, writing by Andrei Khalip)
The article discusses ECB's forecast for gradual interest rate cuts to ease restrictive levels.
The ECB cut its key rate by 0.25 percentage points to 3%.
Mario Centeno is a policymaker at the ECB and governor of the Bank of Portugal.
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