By Marta Vilar – MADRID (Econostream) – European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde said Friday that interest rates would not move in sync with energy prices, stressing that policymakers would assess the broader impact of the energy shock on inflation, growth and consumption when deciding on future policy moves.

Speaking at a press conference following an Informal Ecofin meeting in Dublin, Lagarde said uncertainty continued to define the economic outlook and justified the ECB taking decisions on a meeting-by-meeting basis.

“Interest rates do not move in lockstep with the price of energy, because obviously the price of energy and its impact on prices has also an impact on other factors, including, notably, growth and consumption,” she said.

“We’re factoring all these elements, and the lockstep mechanism is not the one that actually applies,” she added.

Lagarde said the ECB was taking a “measured response” to the current situation and using different scenarios to assess the consequences of changes in key variables, with energy playing a significant role in its projections.

Following last week's 25bp rate increase, she said the ECB was “well positioned” to assess incoming information before deciding on its next steps.

“We think that we are well positioned in order to respond to more data, more information, more numbers to have a good assessment of changes,” she said.

Lagarde also defended the ECB’s decision last week to raise interest rates by 25bp, describing the move as “a necessity” to ensure inflation returned to target.

Separately, Lagarde announced that the ECB would launch Pontes on September 21, allowing banks to transact among themselves using tokenized assets and distributed ledger technology.

She described Monday’s launch as the beginning of a longer process, with further development still required.

Asked whether Eurozone finance ministers had questioned her about the possibility of leaving the ECB presidency before the end of her term, Lagarde said the issue had not been raised.

“[N]othing to be reported, nothing to be discussed,” she said.