ECB says buys 9.8 bn euros in bonds in 3 days

The ECB has bought 9.8 billion euros ($10.4 billion) in eurozone bonds in the first three days of its programme to ward off deflation and stimulate growth, a senior official said Thursday.

"We have already bought 9.8 billion euros in bonds in three days" said Benoit Coeure, a member of the European Central Bank's executive board said at a symposium in Paris.

He said the ECB was on "precisely the right path" to attain its objective of buying 60 billion euros of eurozone government and corporate bonds a month.

The ECB has embarked on a policy of so-called quantitative easing or QE, under which it plans to buy 1.14 trillion euros worth of bonds off banks and investors over the next 18 months. It hopes the money will be used to make new loans and investments, thus spurring growth and ensuring a dangerous cycle of falling prices does not set in.

Coeure said the average maturity of the debt was close to nine years, which he called "very long" and which he said should "reinforce the economic effect of the intervention" by the central bank as the ECB's injection of funds into the eurozone economy would last longer.

He said fears that the ECB wouldn't be able to purchase sufficient amounts of bonds had been overblown.

Eurozone government bond yields have been falling to new lows for weeks in anticipation of the ECB's QE programme, and they've struck fresh records this week.