04/03/2020
The European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde said the bank is ready to take "appropriate and targeted measures" to combat the economic effects of the Coronavirus outbreak.
"The outbreak of the Coruna virus is a rapidly evolving situation, which raises risks to the economic outlook and the functioning of financial markets," Lagarde said in a statement.
"The European Central Bank is closely monitoring developments and their impacts on the economy. We are ready to take appropriate and targeted actions, dictated by necessity and in proportion to the underlying risks," she added.
To that, official statistics released yesterday showed that the annual inflation rate in the euro area fell to 1.2 percent during the month of February, after rising during the past months.
The drop was widely observed in the energy sector, as prices fell by 0.3 percent in February, compared to the same month last year, in the first estimates published by the European Union's statistics office.
The inflation rate in the 19-nation eurozone last January was 1.4 percent and in December 1.3 percent.
The Oxford Research Authority said that the outbreak of the new mutated Coronavirus had an impact on oil prices in the energy sector.
