The European Central Bank will keep its deposit rate at 2.00% at least through the end of this year, a Reuters poll showed, extending its longest spell of steady borrowing costs since the negative-rate era despite heightened geopolitical risks.
"The ECB is now in a sort of textbook perfect situation for a central bank .... It's also very clear over the next six months, the ECB is either staying at 2% or cutting," said Claus Vistesen, chief euro zone economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics.
The ECB, which left rates unchanged for a fifth straight meeting last week, is expected to stay on hold until at least 2027, according to 66 of 74 forecasters, an outlook unchanged since October.
If realised, that would mark the longest run of unchanged rates since the pandemic, when the near-decade stretch of negative rates was in its final stages. Record inflation later forced the ECB to lift rates quickly.
Economists in the February 9-12 poll broadly kept their long-held expectations of steady rates, near-target inflation and stable growth.
