The European Central Bank eased the pace of its bond-buying slightly in the program's third week, but is still on target to inject 60 billion euros into the euro zone economy each month until September 2016.

The ECB said on Monday it had settled a total of 41.016 billion euros of purchases of mainly sovereign bonds by March 27. That put its purchases in the third week of the quantitative easing plan at some 14.7 billion, a touch lower than the 16.5 billion bought in week two.

Under the program, the ECB aims to purchase 60 billion euros a month of securities until September 2016, or beyond that if needed to see a sustained adjustment in the inflation path back towards the ECB's target of just under 2 percent.

The ECB said it had settled 62.862 billion euros in covered bond purchases as of March 27, and 4.646 billion euros in purchases of asset-backed securities (ABS).  (Reuters)

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