DWS: ECB stays the course, next rate cut in December

DWS: ECB stays the course, next rate cut in December

September 12, 2024

Interest Rates ECB
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By Ulrike Kastens, European Economist at asset manager DWS

The ECB delivered today, easing the monetary brake further. This was certainly appropriate, given the growing confidence in the achievement of the inflation target, which was also reflected in the unchanged inflation projections for 2024-2026.

While there are still uncertainties regarding the future development of services prices, economic concerns are likely to become more important, given the weakness of domestic demand. In July, the risks to the economy were already seen as tilted to the downside.

The GDP forecasts for the years 2024 to 2026 have also been revised downwards and the current economic situation is assessed as worse than in July. The ECB continues to maintain its data-dependent approach and ECB President Lagarde firmly rejected any pre-committing of an interest rate path. However, she also stated that a declining path of rates was pretty obvious. So, further rate cuts are in the pipeline. December is likely to be the next date for another cut. Overall, we expect the deposit rate to stand at 2.50 percent in 12 months' time.

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