"I do not appreciate the statements of my colleagues on the prolonged rate hikes": said
the governor of the Bank of Italy, Ignazio Visco,
in his greeting to the XIV Maeci-Bank of Italy conference.
"Even if monetary policy has so far been successful in stabilizing expectations, the serious geopolitical situation makes it very difficult to predict future macroeconomic developments. Monetary policy will therefore have to continue to move cautiously, being guided by the data", and "without putting risking financial stability and minimizing the negative effects on the still fragile recovery," he added.
The fall in the
price of gas
"we don't know if it will stay", because "the uncertainty in supplies remains high" added the governor of the Bank of Italy according to which "the energy 'tax' must be absorbed, as we have repeatedly underlined, not generating vain and harmful chases between prices and wages but by increasing the economy's capacity for development, and with it the dynamics of real incomes".
"In addition to the price increases, there has been a significant increase in volatility fueled above all by the dynamics of the gas price, which has grown drastically, up to the peak of almost 350 euros per megawatt hour reached last summer, to then begin to decline, until falling below below 50 euros, on values still equal to about three times those prevailing on the eve of the pandemic", he explained.
"On the other hand, if the wage requests, rather than aiming forward, were above all guided by the desire to immediately recover the losses due to the increase in the price of energy products and if the profits of the companies, after the transfer on the final prices of the extraordinary increases in the cost of 'energy, were the recent drastic reduction not reflected in the next few months, monetary policy could only continue to counteract the effects of this behavior on consumer prices as a whole", he explained.
And you then reiterated that "the pursuit of monetary stability, the primary responsibility of the central bank, is all the less onerous the more budgetary policy interventions and the intentions of the social partners move in the same direction".
