By Geoffrey Smith
Investing.com -- The European Central Bank kept its monetary policy stance largely unchanged on Thursday, leaving both its official interest rates and its various asset purchase schemes untouched.
It did, however, ease the conditions of its long-term refinancing operations for banks even further, and announced a series of new funding operations to take place from May, with the final one maturing in September 2021. Banks will be able to make use of the recent relaxation in the rules regarding eligible collateral at the new operations, to be known as PELTROs.
It also held out the prospect of adding to its bond purchases in the future, if need be.
"The Governing Council is fully prepared to increase the size of the PEPP and adjust its composition, by as much as necessary and for as long as needed," the ECB said. The Pandemic Emergency Purchase Program, announced in March, has an overall size of 750 billion euros ($815 billion).
The decisions come on the same day that new data showed the eurozone economy shrunk by 3.8% in the first three months of the year from the final quarter of 2019. As that number isn't annualized, that represents a much sharper decline than the 4.8% drop in U.S. GDP announced on Wednesday. However, it also reflects the fact that European economies went into lockdown earlier than the U.S.
ECB President Christine Lagarde will elaborate further on the decisions at her press conference, which starts at 8:30 AM ET (1230 GMT).