LONDON (MaceNews) – Any statement or expansion of European Central Bank policy at the annual policy forum scheduled Tuesday is likely to come from President Christine Lagarde’s opening statement scheduled for 1400 CET on Tuesday, according to senior ECB officials.
Lagarde will kick off the ECB’s annual policy forum, an event usually held in the Portuguese city of Sintra, Portugal, but taking place online this year due to Covid restrictions.
While the officials would not comment on whether Lagarde would unveil any new thinking on the part of the ECB’s governing council, they did acknowledge questions over what information the ECB should heed in implementing monetary policy going forward.
Officials also pointed to the denouement of the two-day event — a panel discussion amongst the luminaries of the central banking world — as another opportunity for policy revelations. Lagarde, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey and Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda will discuss the post-pandemic economic world at 17:45 CET on Wednesday.
Other panels, hosted by ECB governing council members, will provide an opportunity for participating academic economists to showcase their work, said the officials. However, they acknowledged that the Future of Inflation discussion, chaired by Isabel Schnabel at 1700 CET on Tuesday, will encompass hawkish voices, in contrast with the Bank’s ongoing belief that the recent inflationary uptick will prove to be transitory.
Opening sessions on Tuesday on corporate insolvency and corporate indebtedness are unlikely to dwell on the troubles surrounding troubled Chinese property group Evergrande, according to an official, noting those panels are intended to discuss the future of indebted European firms as crisis support tapers off.