By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – European Central Bank Governing Council member Mārtiņš Kazāks on Tuesday said the ECB would raise interest rates if the latest energy shock began feeding through into broader inflation, while declining to rule out action as soon as next month.

Kazāks, who heads Latvijas Banka, told Latvian website Delfi that policymakers would not wait if they saw a genuine risk of inflation shifting “from energy to other segments.”

“Of course we won’t delay and we will raise rates,” he said. As for whether that conclusion could already be drawn for the Council’s April meeting, he said: “We’ll see. April is very close.”

He also did not reject current market pricing for more than one increase this year.

“Financial markets are expecting those two increases, by the end of the year by about 50bp,” he said. “And is that a plausible scenario? Quite possibly. But whether that will happen we’ll see. Because we don’t know how long the conflict will last, or what the oil price will be.”