The European Central Bank (ECB) purchased €8.69 billion of government and agency bonds under its quantitative-easing program last week.

The ECB bought €591 million of covered bonds, and €27 million of asset-backed securities.

The ECB kept its interest rate unchanged at 0.05% on December 04, but lowered its deposit rate to -0.3% from -0.2%. The asset-buying programme will be extended until the end of March 2017. The volume of the monthly purchases remained unchanged.