The European Central Bank has rolled out an emergency EUR 750 billion package to ease the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.
It will buy government and company debt across the eurozone. Moreover, in recent weeks central banks and governments around the world have announced major stimulus plans. The Pandemic Emergency Purchase Programme comes just six days after the ECB unveiled measures that failed to calm markets, piling pressure on it to do more to support Europe's economies, according to BBC.
The asset purchasing scheme will be temporary and be concluded once the ECB ‘judges that the coronavirus Covid-19 crisis phase is over, but in any case, not before the end of 2020’, BBC cited a statement made by ECB’s authority Christine Lagarde.
Still, in recent days the ECB had been criticised for not doing enough to support the eurozone compared to the drastic action taken by the US Federal Reserve. On March 15, 2020 the Fed cut interest rates to almost zero and launched a USD 700 billion stimulus programme. As part of that announcement, the Fed said it would work with other central banks to increase the availability of dollars for commercial banks.
It was part of co-ordinated action launched by the UK, Japan, eurozone, Canada and Switzerland.
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