ECB’s Centeno: ‘We Did It, Inflation Is Under Control’

4 October 2024

By Marta Vilar – MADRID (Econostream) – European Central Bank Governing Council member Mário Centeno on Friday declared victory over inflation and pointed to the recent decrease in services inflation.

In a panel session with Banco de España Governor José Luis Escrivá at Foro La Toja in Galicia, Spain, Centeno, who heads the Banco de Portugal, said that ‘we did it, inflation is under control. A decrease in services inflation too is a very good sign’.

Inflation was now close to 2%, he said.

‘The interest rate path we project must be predictable, despite it being true that we decide meeting by meeting and we are data-dependent’, he observed.

The labour market was starting to raise the first doubts, according to Centeno.

‘The number of job positions opened by companies is now 20% below what it was two years ago. The number of new hires is 10% below the high we saw in the second quarter of 2022, when the ECB started hiking rates’, he added.

These are the first figures that should start to concern the ECB, he said.