AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – Klaas Knot, a member of the European Central Bank’s governing council, said on Sunday he expected the ECB to start raising interest rates in the fourth quarter of this year.
In an interview with the Dutch television channel Buitenhof, the governor of the central bank of the Netherlands, considered one of the staunchest supporters of monetary orthodoxy within the ECB, also came out in favor of a reduction the Frankfurt Institute’s asset purchases as quickly as possible.
“I personally expect our first rate hike to come around the fourth quarter of this year…Normally we would raise rates by a quarter of a point, I have no reason to think that we would take a different initiative,” he said, adding that a second rate hike would closely follow the first, likely in the first quarter of 2023.
ECB President Christine Lagarde did not explicitly rule out a rate hike from 2022 on Thursday, deeming such a scenario “improbable”.
(Report Toby Sterling, French version Bertrand Boucey)
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