FRANKFURT, Sept. 8 (Xinhua) -- The European Central Bank (ECB) decided to take no further action on its monetary policy for the euro area on Thursday, leaving the key interest rates unchanged and extending the monthly asset purchase of 80 billion euros (90 billion U.S. dollars) until the end of March next year.
ECB President Mario Draghi said at a press conference here that the question of the extension of the Asset Purchase Programme -- also known as Quantitative Easing (QE) -- had not been discussed at the governing council meeting on Thursday.
"For the time being, the changes are not so substantial to warrant a decision to act," he said.
Draghi emphasized that the monetary policy adopted by the ECB turned out to be fully effective, seeing that credit had been growing constantly within the euro area since 2014, the financial fragmentation was over, and shocks to the eurozone economy had been effectively addressed at the beginning of this year.
"Transmission of monetary policy has never worked better than it does today," he added.
In addition, the ECB revised the GDP growth forecast of the euro area slightly upwards to 1.7 percent for 2016, while lowering the growth forecast by 0.1 percentage point to 1.6 percent for both 2017 and 2018, according to the latest ECB staff macroeconomic projections.
Meanwhile, the outlook for the eurozone annual inflation rates for the coming years remained broadly unchanged.
"We continue to expect real GDP to grow at a moderate but steady pace and euro area inflation to rise gradually over the coming months," said the head of the ECB.
