A rise in the European Central Bank's quantitative easing programme might be enforced as soon as early December, president Mario Draghi has said. The Italian ECB boss told bankers that action was needed to raise the Eurozone inflation.

Underlining the financial slowdown in emerging markets as well as the sluggish recovery in the Eurozone countries, Draghi said: "We consider the asset purchase programme to be a powerful and flexible instrument, as it can be adjusted in terms of size, composition or duration to achieve a more expansionary stance.

"We will do what we must to raise inflation as quickly as possible. That is what our price stability mandate requires of us," Draghi said at his speech in Frankfurt. Much like the Bank of England, Draghi's ECB has an inflation target of 2%, but prices in the eurozone have continuously stayed low, with CPI at 0.1% in October.

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Apart from the weakness in emerging market, the fact that the recovery is modest and lengthy in the eurozone is a sign that action is needed in terms of monetary policy. The current asset buying plan stands at €60bn a month and is expected to result in a total of €1.1bn ECB money being injected into the market.

"The level of the deposit facility rate can also empower the transmission of APP, not least by increasing the velocity of circulation of bank reserves." Draghi said, adding that the bank's monetary policies had already helped small companies.

A survey by the ECB showed that a 20% majority of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) have seen an increase in revenue, as opposed to a downturn in the top line.

European Central Bank