OREANDA-NEWS. The Finance Minister of France, Michel Sapin, will visit the Bank of Lithuania on Friday, 27 March. The Chairman of the Board of the Bank of Lithuania, Vitas Vasiliauskas, during his meeting with M. Sapin will discuss progress in quantitative promotion, begun this month by the European Central Bank (ECB), as well as accenting need for structural reforms.

“Although the ECB’s expanded asset purchase program implementation is only gaining momentum, the expectations associated with it already had a positive effect — improvement in conditions of loans to businesses and households, decrease in a number of euro area sovereign bond, including Lithuania’s, interest rates,” said V. Vasilaiuskas before the meeting.

Euro area bank surveys show that they tend to mitigate the conditions for granting loans to both businesses and residents. Similar trends are observed in Lithuania as well.

He also stressed that in order to propel the euro area economy, the ECB’s monetary policy measures to encourage non-standard economies is not enough. It is very important that all of the single currency bloc countries also comply with fiscal discipline and the rapid implementation of the labour market and competitiveness-enhancing structural reforms.

V. Vasiliauskas will also discuss with the Finance Minister of France the EU investment promotion initiatives, the situation of negotiations with Greece, the future of the economic and monetary union, as well as other issues.