FRANKFURT MAIN: Growth in lending to the eurozone’s private sector slowed in November, the first month after the European Central Bank relaunched its controversial bond-buying scheme, data from the Frankfurt institution showed on Friday.

Credit grew by 3.6 per cent year-on-year in November, a pace 0.1 percentage points below October’s reading, the ECB said in figures adjusted for some purely financial transactions.

Growth in lending to businesses fell back to 3.4pc -- down 0.4 points -- while the rate of expansion in credit to households was steady at 3.5pc.

In the final monetary policy shift under former ECB president Mario Draghi, governors decided last year to relaunch their “quantitative easing” (QE) bond-buying scheme at 20 billion euros ($22.3bn) per month from November.

Amounting to 2.6 trillion euros in 2015-18, the scheme was designed to pump cash through the financial system and encourage lending, in turn stimulating growth and inflation.

Published in Dawn, January 4th, 2020