Eurozone loans to private sector growing again

FRANKFURT - Agence France-Presse

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Loans to the private sector in the euro area, a gauge of economic health, have started growing again, suggesting the European Central Bank’s monetary policy is beginning to work, ECB data showed April 29. 

After long months of contraction, the volume of loans to private businesses and households increased by 0.1 percent in March compared with the same month in 2014, the ECB said in a statement.

The long and deep financial crisis in the 19 countries that share the euro has squeezed lending, thus dampening economic activity. But the ECB has launched a raft of different policy measures to get credit flowing again, most recently a massive program to buy more than one trillion euros ($1.1 trillion) worth of public sector bonds to pump liquidity into the system.

And those measures are now beginning to make themselves felt, the ECB data showed.

The overall eurozone money supply grew 4.6 percent in March from a year earlier, faster than the four percent recorded in February.

The ECB regards M3 money supply as a barometer for future inflation.

A new Greek expert team, tasked with negotiating with the country’s creditors, met on April 28 to draw up a series of reforms aimed at finally reaching a deal with the EU and the IMF.

The “political negotiation team” of experts, led by the Dutch-born economics professor and junior foreign minister Euclid Tsakalotos, met late in the evening “to devise reform proposals,” the finance ministry said in a statement.