ROME, Nov 10: The European Central Bank’s cut in interest rates this week was more than sufficient and there will be no more cuts in the near future, ECB board member Tommaso Padoa Schioppa was quoted as saying on Saturday.

Asked in an interview with Rome’s La Repubblica newspaper whether the margin for further rates cuts had been exhausted by Thursday’s half-point cut to 3.25 per cent from 3.75 per cent, Padoa Schioppa replied:

Yes. For the moment we do not see any elements that could make us think that after this decision it will be necessary to follow it with another move in the foreseeable future... It was a forward-looking decision.

The move by the ECB came on the same day the Bank of England cut rates and two days after the US Federal Reserve slashed the cost of borrowing for the 10th time this year, cutting the Fed funds rate to a 40-year low of 2.0 per cent.

But Padoa Schioppa said the rapid US rate cuts had not put pressure on the ECB and said the European bank had not been slow to react to the sharp downturn in global growth provoked by the September 11 attacks on the United States.

We have brought rates down at a rate that is quicker than when we were putting them up. We have not been slow, he said.—Reuters