Already in December 2021, we announced that we would discontinue net asset purchases under the bond buying programme we had introduced during the pandemic, and would gradually reduce net asset purchases under the previous asset purchase programme. [3] Then, as inflation accelerated in early 2022, we announced that we would conclude net purchases under all our purchase programmes even sooner.
As a result, even before we began raising policy rates, longermaturity market rates had moved up by almost 200 basis points. [4] The battle had begun. We started rate hikes in July 2022 and, since then, we have raised rates by 375 basis points in less than a year – from -0.5% to 3.25% today.