DUBLIN (Reuters) – European Central Bank policymaker Klaas Knot said he is “not uncomfortable” with current market expectations which envisage interest rates rising to around 3.85% from 3% currently, the Dutch central banker told the Irish Times in an interview.
“We are now in what I would call mildly restrictive territory with policy rates, but inflation is not mild. Inflation is still much too high,” the newspaper on Thursday quoted him as saying.
“Mildly restrictive territory will not be enough to counter an underlying inflation rate that has been creeping up towards 6%. We need a sufficiently restrictive stance. Where is sufficiently restrictive, I don’t know, but clearly not where we are today.”
(Reporting by Padraic Halpin; editing by Jason Neely)
