El BCE relajó su tono pero no anunció cambios a su política monetaria

Genevieve Signoret & Patrick Signoret

En su reunión del pasado jueves 3 de abril, el Comité Ejecutivo del Banco Central Europeo (BCE) no redujo sus tasas de política monetaria ni anunció medidas de estímulo monetario no convencionales. Sin embargo, sí se declaró comprometido a “usar los instrumentos no convencionales dentro de su mandato para lidiar eficazmente con los riesgos de un lapso demasiado prolongado de inflación baja”. Este compromiso fue unánime e incluye las compras de activos. Abajo compartimos lo que estamos leyendo en Barclays 1 ($), Barclays 2 ($) y Reuters.

El 31 de marzo, Francois Cabau y Khrishnamoorthy Sooben de Barclays advertían ($) que el riesgo de deflación en la zona del euro seguía presente y estaba creciendo. También de Barclays, Philippe Gudin, Antonio Garcia Pascual y Thomas Harjes argumentaban ($) que el BCE está tomando riesgos innecesarios al no relajar más su postura y discutiendo las medidas que el banco central podría tomar:

What actions could the ECB take? In addition to rate cuts (refi, MLF and deposit rates), some of the following policy options are likely: a conditional LTRO, possibly at a fixed rate; ceasing the sterilization of the SMP programme; and an SME-focused funding for lending scheme. Such measures could be put in place after the ECB gets a clearer picture about banks’ balance sheets once the AQR is completed internally, probably around May. Is an asset purchase programme completely out of the question? We do not think so. As indicated recently by Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann, it remains part of the ECB toolbox should the macroeconomic and inflation conditions require it. However, we believe the bar remains high for a government bond purchase programme. It would, in our view, require sufficiently adverse shocks that would move actual inflation below, say, 0.5% y/y for a couple of months, combined with clear evidence of de-anchoring expectations, including in the 5y5y inflation-linked swaps.

Mario Draghi (en la conferencia de prensa) sobre la posibilidad de QE y la importancia del tipo de cambio en las decisiones del BCE:

Question: Mr Draghi, in your comments, you noted that the Governing Council was unanimous in its commitment to using unconventional instruments that are within its mandate. Can you tell us whether or not that includes quantitative easing (QE) with the government bond element to it? And for my second question: Is the Governing Council unanimous in what sort of conditions it would need to see resolved in terms of the outlook and also in terms of the exchange rate in order to tap some of these unconventional measures?

Draghi: I think you have rightly pointed to the key sentence in the statement: “The Governing Council is unanimous in its commitment to using also unconventional instruments …” – meaning that we haven’t finished with our conventional measures – “… also unconventional instruments within its mandate in order to cope effectively with risks of a too prolonged period of low inflation.” So this statement says that all instruments that fall within the mandate, including QE, are intended to be part of this statement. During the discussion we had today, there was indeed a discussion of QE. It was not neglected in the course of what was actually a very rich and ample discussion.

The exchange rate is very important for price stability, so much so that we have made an explicit reference to it in the introductory statement, as you have seen, where we say that “… the Governing Council sees both upside and downside risks to the outlook for price developments as limited and broadly balanced over the medium term. In this context, the possible repercussions of both geopolitical risks and exchange rate developments will be monitored closely”. But, as I have said several times, it is not a policy target. It is an increasingly important factor in our medium-term assessment of price stability, but it is not a policy target. In this sense, we do not link our medium-term assessment to a precise level of the exchange rate. It is part of the overall information that comes into play when we undertake our medium-term assessment.

Reuters citó a un periódico alemán que reportó, el día siguiente a la reunión, que el BCE ha modelado los efectos sobre la inflación de un programa de compras de activos de un billón de euros. Los resultados serían modestos, según los modelos: la tasa de inflación de la zona del euro subiría entre 0.2 y 0.8 puntos porcentuales.