As expected the European Central Bank kept the basic interest rate at 1.00% after ECB had cut the rate in twice in the past couple of months. President of ECB, Mario Draghi continues to call for structural reforms in EU countries.
Mario Draghi and the rest of European Central Bank council convened today in Frankfurt and decided to keep the Euro Area interest unchanged at 1.00%.
Following this announcement the ECB held a press conference in which the ECB president Draghi referred to this rate decision. Mario Draghi stated that he welcomes the decisions taken in recent EU Summits and calls for additional “urgent implementation of bold and ambitious structural reforms”.
The Euro Area flash report of the December inflation showed a decline to 2.8% inflation in annual terms, which is still higher than the 2% inflation target of ECB.
The chart below shows the development of the inflation of EU and interest rates of ECB during 2011-2012.
Currently, this news seems to have some effect on the commodities and forex markets as Euro is traded up against the U.S. dollar and major commodities prices are rising.
Euros to USD is currently traded at 1.2797 a 0.7122% increase as of 14:39*.
Current gold price, short term futures (February 2012 delivery) is traded at $1,662.3 per t oz. a $22.6 increase or 1.38%, as of 15:00*.
Current silver price, short term futures (February 2012 delivery) is traded at $30.59 per t oz. a $0.70 increase or 2.34 %, as of 15:00*.
Current Nymex crude oil price, short term futures (February 2012 delivery) is traded up by 1.64%, at $102.52 per barrel as of 15:09*.
(* GMT)
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