European Central Bank keeps interest rates unchanged

The European Central Bank (ECB) on Thursday decided to keep interest rates unchanged at a regular governing council meeting here. The Governing Council of the ECB decided that the interest rate on the main refinancing operations and the interest rates on the marginal lending facility and the deposit facility will remain unchanged at 0.25 percent, 0.75 percent and 0.00 percent respectively, said a statement by the ECB. The annual inflation in the Euro area is expected to be 0.7 percent in January 2014, down from 0.8 percent in December 2013, according to a flash estimate from Eurostat, the statistics office of the European Union. Some economists believe the low level of inflation may add to the pressure on the ECB to ease its monetary policy more. The ECB's assessment of the inflation expectations has not changed much, according to what the ECB president Mario Draghi said in an introductory statement. "As stated previously, we are now experiencing a prolonged period of low inflation, which will be followed by a gradual upward movement towards inflation rates below, but close to 2 percent later on," Draghi read out. He added that the inflation rate seen in January is expected to remain so for months to come. "Incoming information confirms that the moderate recovery of the euro area economy is proceeding in line with our previous assessment," Draghi said.