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European Central Bank Maintains Interest Rates Unchanged

Business Materials 4 September 2008 18:59 (UTC +04:00)
European Central Bank Maintains Interest Rates Unchanged

Azerbaijan, Baku, 4 September /corr. Trend A.Badalova / At its today's meeting the European Central Bank (ECB) made a decision to maintain base rate without changes at the level of 4.25%. This decision coincided with the forecasts of many analysts.

The Head of the bank, Jean-Claude Trichet, said to press conference as a result of the meeting that maintaining price stability in the intermediate-term plan is the basic task of the Central Bank.

"We are decisive in the approach to maintenance of intermediate-term and long-term expectations on the inflation, taking into account the stability of prices," said Trichet, whose press conference was transmitted on direct ether of the Vesti Television Channel.    

According to him, this will support purchasing stability in the intermediate-term plan, and also significant and stable increase and employment.

The Head of the Central Bank mentioned decrease in the real GDP of Eurozone in 2008.

For the first time since 2007, in order to combat the inflation, the interest rate was increased by 0.25 percent points at the July meeting of the ECB. The purposeful level of the inflation of Bank is 2%.

According to the preliminary data of statistical bureau Eurostat, in August 2008 the inflation in 15 countries, which are part of Eurozone, was 3.8% in the annual calculation. The increase in the consumer prices was 4.1% in July.

According to the forecast of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the economic growth in the Eurozone in 2008 will be 1.3%. Earlier the index of increase in this region was forecasted at the level of 1.7%.

Early today at the meeting of the Committee on Credit Money Policy of Bank of England, a decision was made to preserve accounting rate without changes at the level of 5%.

The correspondent can be contacted at: с[email protected]

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