ECB’s Makhlouf: ‘I Would Expect Interest Rates to Continue to Go up’

27 November 2022

By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – European Central Bank Governing Council member Gabriel Makhlouf on Sunday said that interest rates would have to continue rising even after a hike next month.

In an interview with Irish daily the Irish Independent, Makhlouf, who heads the Central Bank of Ireland, indicated that the December rate hike, whose magnitude the paper said he did not know, would likely not be the ECB’s last.

‘I think it’s probably too soon to say that it’ll be the end of it. I would expect interest rates to continue to go up’, he was quoted as saying. ‘No one’s debating whether or not it should go up. There’s an acceptance that it should go up.’

‘When we get into next year, the likelihood is that if the rates go up, they’ll go up by smaller increments’, Makhlouf said. ‘Then we’ll have to see what’s happening to the euro area economy – so we can judge how much more we need to do. And over what pace do we need to do it.’

Makhlouf said that monetary authorities were ‘determined that we’re going to succeed’ and that inflation would be lower by the second half of 2023. ‘I’m confident about that’, he said.