CERNOBBIO Italy (Reuters) - The European Central Bank should be ready to take further measures to guarantee monetary stability if needed, Ignazio Visco, the governor of the Bank of Italy and a member of the ECB Governing Council said in a newspaper interview on Sunday.
"As the launch of a new programme of covered bond purchases shows, we must not hesitate to take other actions, if they are necessary to guarantee monetary stability," Visco told Italian daily La Repubblica.
The ECB on Thursday unexpectedly cut interest rates to near zero and pledged to buy asset-backed securities to fight low inflation and support economic growth in the euro zone. It also resumed its covered-bond buying programme.
ECB President Mario Draghi said some members of the bank's governing council were in favour of doing more, and that so-called quantitative easing - or buying assets such as government bonds - had been discussed.
Visco said that measures the ECB had taken so far, which also include making available cheap four-year loans to banks, were aimed at boosting lending to the economy.
"The purchases of financial assets based on pools of loans to companies and households go in this direction," he said.
"But we must also look at overall demand: it needs to be stimulated through better use of tools available to policymakers. Monetary policy as far as we're concerned, fiscal policy and reforms when it comes to governments."
Draghi last month said it would be helpful if fiscal policy did more to support demand alongside the ECB's monetary policy, marking a landmark shift in the central bank's stance from a focus on austerity towards reviving growth.
Euro zone economic growth grounded to a halt in the second quarter and the Ukraine crisis is weighing on confidence, clouding prospects for an already fragile recovery.
(Reporting by Valentina Za and Silvia Aloisi. Editing by Jane Merriman)