Draghi widens QE as recovery wanes

Frankfurt

EUROPEAN Central Bank (ECB) president Mario Draghi threw the door wide open on Friday for more dramatic action to rescue the eurozone economy, saying "excessively low" inflation had to be raised quickly by whatever means necessary.

Mr Draghi said there was now no sign of economic improvement in the months ahead and that the ECB would expand and step up its programme to pump more money into the currency bloc if its current measures fell short of lifting inflation. "We will continue to meet our responsibility - we will do what we must to raise inflation and inflation expectations as fast as possible, as our price stability mandate requires of us," Mr Draghi said in a speech at an annual banking congress. "If on its current trajectory our policy is not effective enough to achieve this, or further risks to the inflation outlook materialise, we will step up the pressure and broaden even more the channels through which we intervene, by altering accordingly the size, pace and composition of our purchases."