BERLIN, Jan 23 (Reuters) – The factors behind the rise in prices in the euro zone will ease over the course of the year and inflation will return to around the European Central Bank’s 2% target ( ECB) in the next two years, said Sunday Olli Rehn, one of the members of the board of governors of the institution.
Speaking in an interview with German business daily Handelsblatt, the Finnish central bank governor said the future pace of normalization of the ECB’s currently accommodative monetary policy depends on economic data.
“Personally, I expect the economic data to remain relatively good despite the impact of the Omicron variant,” he said. He added that he sees rate hikes in 2023 as a logical step, at least until there are new economic shocks.
Christine Lagarde, the President of the ECB, said on Friday that energy prices should stabilize in the coming months and that bottlenecks in supply chains, another driver of rising prices, could also resolve.
Inflation in the euro zone reached 5% at an annual rate in December. (Report Michael Nienaber; French version Claude Chendjou)