ECB’s Šimkus on Pace of Rate Cuts: ‘We’re Not in a Rush, We’re Not in a Hurry’

18 April 2024

By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – European Central Bank Governing Council member Gediminas Šimkus on Thursday said that the pace of ECB policy easing did not need to be rushed.

During an event organised by the Reinventing Bretton Woods Committee on the margins of the spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank,, Šimkus, who heads the Bank of Lithuania, responded to a question as to the possibility of the Governing Council cutting only in conjunction with updated projections.

‘We’re not in a rush, we’re not in a hurry', he said.

There was no need for the precision implied by committing now to a particular rhythm, he said.

‘This data-dependent approach, month by month, I think it works very well’, he said.

There was a great deal of attention being paid to the likely date of the first cut, and it made for ‘an interesting discussion’, but ‘25bp won’t change anything about medium-term inflation’, he said.

From the perspective of those setting policy, ‘you want to have this flexibility for your decision’, he said.