Bond buys edge up size of ECB's balance sheet
FRANKFURT (Reuters) - The combined balance sheet of the European Central Bank and the euro zone's 19 national central banks expanded by 14.8 billion euros (£10.6 billion) to 2.349 trillion euros in the week to April 10, the ECB said on Tuesday.
The increase was driven almost entirely by its ongoing asset purchase programme as its stockpile of mainly government bonds bought since the start of March reached 61.7 billion euros.
The asset purchases are part of a broader "quantitative easing" plan to pump a trillion euros into the economy in order to lift inflation towards its target of just under 2 percent.
In addition, the balance sheet figures also showed that the ECB's reserves of gold and gold receivables were unchanged at just under 394 billion euros, while 4.6 billion extra had been borrowed by banks from its lending operations.
(Reporting by Marc Jones)
