The European Central Bank (ECB) decided, for the third time in a row, to maintain reference interest rates at 4.5%.
This decision does not leave everything as it was. Maintaining interest rates at current values reflects the option of increasing the drain of resources from workers and families, as well as from companies, especially micro, small and medium-sized companies, to the banks, which continue to reap huge profits. This decision will also have a negative impact on State financing costs.
More than one million families in Portugal are and will continue to be affected by the serious impacts of high interest rates with the increase of the costs of loans to purchase a home.
The impact of this decision is not the same in all countries. In fact, the ECB’s decisions are particularly affecting Portuguese families. According to the conclusions of a study by the International Monetary Fund, “Portuguese banks are among those best able to transfer rate rises to customers, as well as in delaying the transfer of increases to deposits”. This proves that the ECB's monetary policy, which leaves the underlying causes of inflation untouched, continues to favour banks and large financial capital. In Portugal, the profits of the five main banks are around 12 million euros per day, on average.
PCP’s MPs in the European Parliament reiterate the urgency to reverse the rise in reference interest rates and that, immediately, it should be the banks, and not the families, who bear the impact of the already decided increases.
PCP’s MPs in the European Parliament insist that the current socioeconomic situation, inseparable from the effects of ten consecutive increases in interest rates decided by the ECB and the maintenance of rates at current high levels, makes clear that the abdication of monetary, financial, exchange rate and, to a large extent, budgetary sovereignty, deprives States of the necessary instruments to promote development in accordance with national specificities and to respond adequately to social and economic problems.
