purchases amounting to €60 billion. the purchases will commence in march and, in principle, it is intended that they will be carried out until september 2016, although the governing council of the ecb has given itself the option to continue to make purchases if the path of inflation is not consistent with its aim of achieving inflation rates below, but close to, 2 % over the medium term. the programme requires that, to be eligible for purchase, securities must be at least investment grade, or if not, that their issuers are under an eu - imf financial assistance programme. these conditions are similar to those applied in the requirements for collateral to be eligible for monetary policy operations and those envisaged, in august 2012, in the announcement of the sovereign bond purchase programme known as outright monetary transactions ( omts ). of the additional asset purchases, 12 % will be purchases of bonds issued by european institutions and the other 88 % will be purchases of bonds issued by central governments and agencies of countries in proportion to their shares in the ecb ’ s capital key. the national central banks will purchase the bonds issued by european institutions and most of the domestic bonds, the ecb purchasing 8 % of the latter. according to our preliminary estimates, the purchases of spanish government debt will amount to some €100 billion over the time horizon considered. the agreement reached means that, in the hypothetical event that losses arise from these operations, the national central banks would assume the risks of their purchases of government bonds, while the risk of the purchases of the bonds of european institutions and of sovereign bonds by the ecb would be shared by all the members of the eurosystem. monetary policy leeway in a very low inflation environment let me now comment briefly on two matters of importance in the current context : the leeway available to monetary policy in a very low inflation environment and the different cyclical moment of monetary policy in the main developed economies. the particularly low inflation rates and the prospect that they will remain at similar levels for a prolonged period reduce the scope for monetary policy to bring the financing conditions of the economy into line with its cyclical position when that position is characterised by notable weakness. conventional monetary policies based on setting short - term nominal interest rates reach their lower bound when rates approach 0 %. at that point, any additional monetary stimulus would require non - standard measures designed either to shape agents ’ expectations as to future bis central bankers ’ speeches interest rate behaviour or to change the size and composition of the central bank ’

of banks. more consistent use of instruments is also desirable for a more level playing field among european banks. in the case of non - banks, this macroprudential toolkit is still in its infancy, but pension funds, insurers and investment funds are now playing a greater role in the financial system. improvements to the framework are therefore desirable, particularly for investment funds. this concludes my introduction. 3 / 3 bis - central bankers'speeches