Decisions after March rate hike should be based on macro data – ECB’s Centeno

MILAN, March 6 (Reuters) – European Central Bank (ECB) Governing Council member Mario Centeno said on Monday that decisions taken after the increasingly likely 50 basis point (bp) hike in interest rates ) expected for the end of this month, should be based on macroeconomic indicators.

“We have to analyze very carefully what the forecast for March will be. These are the most important data we will have to guide our future decisions,” Centeno told La Stampa newspaper.

On Sunday, ECB President Christine Lagarde said core inflation in the euro zone would remain high in the near term, making a 50 basis point hike by the end of this month increasingly certain.

The ECB has already hiked rates by 3 percentage points since July and almost promised another hike of half a percentage point on March 16.

“If you ask me what will happen after March, I think it’s important to take seriously the estimates that we will have in a few days,” Centeno said, adding that the process of raising rates had been too quick.

“It has never happened before, it has never gone so fast. We need a little patience to allow this 300 basis point increase to have an impact on inflation, because it That’s our main goal,” he said.

(Reporting by Federico Maccioni, editing by Cristina Carlevaro, Kirsten Donovan, editing in Spanish by Tomás Cobos)