Despite a soft batch of Eurozone data ECB Governing Council member Jan Smets remained optimistic. He said in a WSJ interview that “the latest data remain pretty consistent with the story of the economic expansion continuing at a robust pace.”
And the central bank would be ready to phase out the EUR 30b per month asset purchase program later this year. Instead, Smets said ECB would turn the policy focus toward communicating on interest rates.
Reuters reported sources saying the ECB policy would not want to upset market expectations. That is, investors are expecting the asset purchases to end this year and there would be finally a rate hike towards the middle of 2019.
