ECB’s Centeno: Confident About Disinflation, but Must Remain Prudent

2 July 2024

By Isabel Teles – SINTRA, Portugal (Econostream) – European Central Bank Governing Council member Mário Centeno on Tuesday said that the ECB was confident about the disinflation path, but that it was still necessary to act prudently.  

In an interview with CNBC on the margins of the ECB Forum on Central Banking, Centeno, who heads the Banco de Portugal, said, ‘We must be prudent, we said that in the last meeting, but we are confident the way we’re going. Our baseline has proved quite solid, we see inflation going down in a sustained manner.’

The June flash inflation released Tuesday showed that the ECB forecast was correct, and ‘gives us confidence that inflation will fall to 2% in a timely manner’, he said.

The ECB would continue to analyse incoming data following the meeting-by-meeting approach, he said, meaning that all meetings were open to decide on interest rate cuts.

‘We did exactly what we need to do at every moment in time, so it’s not going to be different in the next few meetings’, he said. ‘And we are data-dependent, so yes, every meeting is open for us to take a decision that suits the evolution of the numbers we see.’