PARIS (Reuters) – The European Central Bank could cut its deposit rate down to 2% by this summer, said Bank of France head and ECB policymaker Francois Villeroy de Galhau in an interview published on Saturday.
“Seen from where we are today, we could be at 2% by the coming summer,” he told the magazine Alternatives Economiques.
Villeroy also reaffirmed that sector consolidation among European banks could make them more competitive on a global level.
On January 30, the European Central Bank cut its deposit rate by 25 basis points to 2.75%, and policymakers guided for a further reduction in March as concerns over lacklustre economic growth supersede worries about persistent inflation.
(Reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta, Editing by Rosalba O’Brien)