Frankfurt / Main (dpa) – According to the European Central Bank (ECB), the sharp rise in inflation rates is likely to end soon.
“We assume that the peak of inflation development will be reached in November and that inflation will gradually decline again in the coming year, in the direction of our inflation target of two percent,” said ECB board member Isabel Schnabel on Monday on ZDF- ” Morning magazine ». “In fact, most forecasts assume that inflation will fall below this two percent. And to that extent, you can’t really see any indications that inflation is getting out of hand. “
Inflation rates have been climbing for months both in Germany and in the euro area as a whole. The values recently moved further and further away from the goal of the ECB to ensure stable prices in the currency area in the medium term with inflation of 2 percent. Higher inflation weakens purchasing power, and consumers can then buy less for one euro than before.
Understanding of worries
You can very well understand that many people are currently worried about the very high inflation rates, said Schnabel. “But you just have to understand that this has to do with the very unusual economic situation of the pandemic: After the lockdowns, the economy popped up again astonishingly quickly, demand rose, and companies couldn’t keep up with production.” The consequences are delivery bottlenecks and raw material shortages.
In addition, there would be special statistical effects, “that we have such high inflation rates today because the prices were particularly low a year ago,” explained Schnabel. If you look at the comparison to the time before the pandemic, the rate of price increases in Germany is only around two percent on average.
Schnabel emphasized that the ECB is committed to the goal of price stability: “If we see that inflation could stay above two percent in the long term, then we will of course react very decisively.”
Critics accuse the ECB of fueling inflation with its monetary policy because the central bank is pumping billions into the markets through bond purchases. In addition, the ECB has kept interest rates at a record low for years. “Of course we have the tools to tighten monetary policy,” said Schnabel. “But at the moment it would be a mistake to raise interest rates early and thus slow down the upswing. Because that would essentially lead to increased unemployment and would not be able to change anything about the current very, very high inflation. “