From the end of February until now, purchases of securities and loans to the private sector have increased the size of central banks’ balance sheets in relation to GDP by 13 percentage points for the Federal Reserve, by around 8 points for the Bank of Japan and the Bank of England and by more than 6 points for the Eurosystem.
Net of gold reserves, this share has risen to 33, 114, 34 and 42 per cent respectively (Figure 2). The ECB Governing Council’s intervention was immediate. In order to sustain lending to households and firms, new refinancing operations for banks were introduced and the conditions applied to the existing ones were improved.