After criticism of securities purchases: ECB shall open secret treaty – n-tv.de NEWS

 Economy
 

 Sunday 07 February 2016

 
 
 

 
 Critics accuse the European Central Bank to operate secret state funding or allow this. Responsibility for these charges contributed the central bankers also even as they held rules for securities purchases secret – until now.
 

 
 

The ECB has published a hitherto secret agreement on controversial securities purchases of individual euro area central banks after growing criticism. So should transparency be created, said the European Central Bank (ECB). The so-called ANFA agreement ( “agreement on net financial assets”) regulates between the ECB and the national central banks, the framework in which these securities – including government bonds – may be purchased for its own account for its own purposes

. Such purchases came last in the headlines. They had risen sharply in recent years in part, without the public was informed in detail. Here also the suspicion has been in the media expressed, central banks operated on ANFA purchases prohibited state funding.

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According to the ECB, this ANFA-financial assets have recently fallen slightly and lay – summarized ECB and countries central banks – the end of 2015 at 490 billion euros. Since the introduction of the euro in 2002, this investment portfolios have grown by an average of five percent. Thus, the increase was lower than the growth of banknotes in circulation during the same period. It should be ensured that these investment operations of the national central banks with the prohibition on monetary state financing are consistent, it said in explanation of the ECB, which they now put on their website next to the ANFA Agreement.

A doctoral dissertation at the Technical University of Berlin had in 2015 brought the discussion about such purchases ANFA-rolling. According to the work of the stock of loans and securities from such transactions with the national central banks of 2005 was rocketed by end of 2014 to some 100 billion euros upwards. The Bundesbank had reported in its balance sheet in 2014 around 12.4 billion euros in such securities investments. Among them were, however, no government bonds.

  Source: n-tv.de
 

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