European Central Bank officials shouldn’t overreact to individual points of incoming data when setting monetary policy as the current environment is highly uncertain, incoming Executive Board member Philip Lane said.
While the ECB has acknowledged a shift to the downside in recent weeks, the domestic euro-area economy remains “pretty strong,” Lane said.
“So we will have new comprehensive forecasts in March and at that point I think the ECB can decide where next,” he said. He later added that remark was “no signal whatsoever about decision making.”
“It is even more important during these periods to make a close study of the data because what we have is I think different signals,” Lane said. "It is early days in 2019, we have to not over react to any particular announcement or new data release and really take a measured approach to all of the data."