mario draghi : ecb press conference - introductory statement introductory statement by mr mario draghi, president of the european central bank, and mr vitor constancio, vice - president of the european central bank, frankfurt am main, 9 march 2017. * * * ladies and gentlemen, the vice - president and i are very pleased to welcome you to our press conference. we will now report on the outcome of today ’ s meeting of the governing council. based on our regular economic and monetary analyses, we decided to keep the key ecb interest rates unchanged. we continue to expect them to remain at present or lower levels for an extended period of time, and well past the horizon of our net asset purchases. regarding non - standard monetary policy measures, we confirm that we will continue to make purchases under the asset purchase programme ( app ) at the current monthly pace of €80 billion until the end of this month and that, from april 2017, our net asset purchases are intended to continue at a monthly pace of €60 billion until the end of december 2017, or beyond, if necessary, and in any case until the governing council sees a sustained adjustment in the path of inflation consistent with its inflation aim. the net purchases will be made alongside reinvestments of the principal payments from maturing securities purchased under the app. our monetary policy measures have continued to preserve the very favourable financing conditions that are necessary to secure a sustained convergence of inflation rates towards levels below, but close to, 2 % over the medium term. their ongoing pass - through to the borrowing conditions for firms and households benefits credit creation and supports the steadily firming recovery of the euro area economy. sentiment indicators suggest that the cyclical recovery may be gaining momentum. headline inflation has again increased, largely on account of rising energy and food price inflation. however, underlying inflation pressures continue to remain subdued. the governing council will continue to look through changes in hicp inflation if judged to be transient and to have no implication for the medium - term outlook for price stability. a very substantial degree of monetary accommodation is still needed for underlying inflation pressures to build up and support headline inflation in the medium term. if the outlook becomes less favourable, or if financial conditions become inconsistent with further progress towards a sustained adjustment in the path of inflation, we stand ready to increase our asset purchase programme in terms of size and / or duration. let me now explain our assessment in greater detail, starting with the economic analysis. euro area real gdp increased by 0

3 ) firms ’ and households ’ medium - to long - term growth expectations ; ( 4 ) the extent of the front - loaded increase and subsequent decline in demand prior to and after the consumption tax hikes ; and ( 5 ) fiscal sustainability in the medium to long term. following a review by the bank, these risks were assessed as being “ balanced, ” although uncertainty remained high, including that regarding developments in overseas economies ( chart 7 ). as for upside and downside risks specific to prices, the following uncertainties were examined : ( 1 ) developments in firms ’ and households ’ medium - to long - term inflation expectations ; ( 2 ) the responsiveness of prices to the output gap ; and ( 3 ) developments in import prices reflecting fluctuations in international commodity prices and foreign exchange rates. after the bank examined these matters, it assessed that the risks on the price front as “ largely balanced ” ; however, considerable uncertainty surrounds developments in medium - to long - term inflation expectations ( chart 7 ). regarding these risk assessments, my personal views will be explained in section iv. c. quantitative and qualitative monetary policy ( qqe ) next, i would like to consider qqe, which was introduced at the mpm held on april 3 and 4. the aforementioned outlook report certainly reflects the projected effects of the new monetary policy. qqe was adopted after analyzing the effectiveness and limitations of the previous cme, and the aim was to maintain the 2 percent price stability target adopted in january 2013 under cme. this will be explained in detail in section iii. here, i would like to examine the four main aspects related to qqe. aspect 1 : increase in purchases of japanese government bonds ( jgbs ) and extension of their maturities the first characteristic of qqe is the purchase of jgbs as the most important tool toward achieving the 2 percent price stability target at the earliest possible time. the integration of jgb purchases under a regular purchase operation ( informally called the rinban operation ) with the asset purchase program was finally achieved, as explained in section iii. moreover, the average remaining maturity of the bank ’ s jgb purchases was decided to be extended from the current level of slightly under three years ( after integrating the two operations ) to about seven years ( six to eight years ) by purchasing jgbs with maturities of up to 40 years ; this was done to exert further downward pressure on the whole yield curve ( chart 8 ).