ECB President Mario Draghi said Thursday that the European Central Bank (ECB) will kick off its 60 billion euro-a-month ($66.3 billion) bond purchases on March 9 while keeping rates at record lows.
The central bank also upped its growth forecasts after better economic news from the euro zone, at the same time cutting its inflation forecast for 2015.
After a spate of encouraging economic data, including signs that business activity is accelerating, the ECB hiked its growth estimate to 1.5 percent for 2015, up from 1 percent in December last year. It expects gross domestic product (GDP) to expand by 1.9 percent in 2016 and 2.1 percent in 2017.
The ECB also revised its inflation forecast for this year to 0 percent, down from its previous 2015 inflation forecast of 0.7 percent, but raised the 2016 forecast to 1.5 percent from 1.3 percent. The updated forecast comes after the region's annual inflation rate turned negative in December 2014, falling to minus 0.2 percent.
Speaking to reporters after the ECB's monetary policy meeting, this time held in Cyprus, Draghi said: "We will, on 9 March 2015, start purchasing euro-dominated public sector securities in the secondary market. We will also continue to purchase asset-backed securities and covered bonds which we started last year."
The euro had dropped sharply ahead of Thursday's European Central Bank (ECB) policy meeting, falling from around 1.1170 to an 11-year low of 1.1061 in early trading on Thursday. After Draghi started speaking, however, the euro briefly spiked to a session high before falling lower again while German bund yields traded around 0.4 percent after Draghi's comments, up from Wednesday's close and one-month low of 0.38 percent.
At the last ECB meeting in January, Draghi announced a 1-trillion euro ($1.1 trillion) QE program. The bank now meets every six weeks.