European Central Bank Governing Council member Ignazio Visco said inflation may come down more quickly than the institution projected last month as falling energy costs continue to affect a broader range of prices.
(Bloomberg) — European Central Bank Governing Council member Ignazio Visco said inflation may come down more quickly than the institution projected last month as falling energy costs continue to affect a broader range of prices.
While inflation measures that strip out volatile items are “stubborn,” lower prices for commodities including natural gas are expected to have a growing impact, Visco told Bloomberg Television on Tuesday.
“Since we have also been observing a substantial reduction in energy prices, we have to expect that this will be seen also in underlying inflation in the coming months, certainly by the end of the year,” Visco said in Gandhinagar, India, where he’s attending a meeting of Group of Twenty finance chiefs.
“The ECB projects that by the end of 2025 there will be 2% — my impression is that it might be faster,” said Visco, who also heads the Bank of Italy.
Officials are planning to raise interest rates by another 25 basis points at a meeting next week. It’s unclear whether this will mark the end of their journey or whether the toughest tightening campaign in the central bank’s history will continue at the next scheduled gathering in September.
Economists are expecting that it will, according to a Bloomberg poll released this week, which would mean bringing the deposit rate to 4% from 3.5% now. While more hawkish officials have suggested hikes should extend into the fall, others fret about damage to economic expansion after the euro zone fell into a recession over the winter.
“There is a risk of doing too much and I think that we have to be careful about that,” Visco said. “There is also a risk that we may do too little, so we have to be balanced and we have to decide on the basis of the incoming information.”
Bundesbank President Joachim Nagel told Bloomberg on Monday he expects another hike this month, and that any move in September will depend on the data.
Policymakers are particularly concerned about core inflation, which has been stickier than the headline number. It ticked up to 5.4% last month, though the ECB forecast that it will slow to 2.2% in the fourth quarter of 2025, with the headline number seen reaching 2.1% in the same period.
Visco, who is set to retire later this year, said he is confident that the ECB can achieve its task without triggering an economic downturn.
“I don’t think that we need to have a recession,” Visco said. “We can disinflate the economy without a recession. We have to be careful on that.”
–With assistance from Andy Clarke, Kurien Abraham and Alessandra Migliaccio.
More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com
©2023 Bloomberg L.P.