ECB sees risks to euro zone growth

Cites a disorderly Brexit as a key risk

MADRID: The balance of euro zone growth risks is clearly tilted to the downside, European Central Bank policymaker Pablo Hernandez de Cos said on Saturday, citing a disorderly Brexit as a key risk and acknowledging the ECB’s shortcomings in meeting its inflation goals. De Cos said in a speech in La Granda in northern Spain that Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union “remains a focus of first-order uncertainty for the global economy and, especially, for the rest of the EU.” “The most recent events, including the decision to suspend the activity of the British parliament by the new prime minister until mid-October, have increased the likelihood that markets are giving to a hard Brexit,” De Cos said. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Wednesday he will suspend parliament from mid-September to mid-October ahead of an October 31 Brexit deadline, raising the stakes in the country’s deepest political crisis in decades.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 1^st, 2019.

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