The European Central Bank is currently forecasting that the rate of inflation will decline steadily from the beginning of next year after the peak at the end of 2021 and will again be below the ECB’s target of two percent at the end of the year, said the Austrian ECB Council member on Saturday in an interview with ORF Radio station Ö1. “There are indications that there is a risk that inflation is higher, but that assessment will be able to be checked very, very quickly when we see how inflation is realizing next year. If there is not this sharp decline, the current one is addressed, then everyone, including other colleagues, will certainly also undertake a revision and we will of course change our monetary policy direction, “said Holzmann.
There are different views in the Governing Council of the current very high inflation, but these are not trenches, but nuances, said the central bank chief. If the inflation forecast increases, the ECB is ready to adjust monetary policy accordingly. Holzmann assumes that the new virus mutation Omikron will weaken the upswing, but that economic dynamism will still be high in 2022. He does not see a wave of bankruptcies rolling towards Austria.
In 2018, Holzmann was nominated as the new governor of the OeNB by the then ruling party, the FPÖ. Holzmann did not want to comment on the current vaccination-critical course of the FPÖ in the interview. He thinks vaccination is very important and has been vaccinated three times himself. Regarding vaccination requirements, he said that other countries had achieved higher vaccination coverage rates on a voluntary basis. From Holzmann’s point of view, this would also have been possible in Austria.
Source: Nachrichten
