(Bloomberg) -- Euro-area consumer-price numbers are offering some encouragement for policymakers, according to European Central Bank Vice President Luis de Guindos.
“There’s good news with inflation and not so good news on economic growth,” he said in Madrid on Thursday. “We expect services inflation to slow down in the coming months. Our expectation of inflation evolution is that it will converge in a clear and stable manner towards price stability, 2%.”
The ECB has already cut rates three times since June and is expected to do so again next month. Guindos stuck with the central bank’s standard line that “the evolution of the monetary policy will depend on inflation.”
He also highlighted that the economic “recovery we were anticipating is not happening with the intensity we expected.”
“There has been a recovery in family incomes that has not been transferred to consumption,” he said.
Last week’s US election has cast an additional pall over the prospects of the euro-area economy, as the return of Donald Trump to the White House might also see the introductions of tariffs by the US.
Guindos said that while it still needs to be seen what actual measures will be taken, protectionism ultimately generates a supply shock that limits growth, echoing earlier comments.
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