Eurogroup head: monetary policy not exhausted, but needs careful design

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Monetary policy has not yet reached its limits, but any further action by central banks to boost the economy would have to be carefully designed to be effective, the chairman of euro zone finance ministers Jeroen Dijsselbloem said on Friday.

Dijsselbloem was responding to a question if central bank policy has reached the limits of what it can do to help economic growth, given that interest rates were negative in many countries around the world.

"I don't think monetary policy has come to its end, there is more that can be done, but it would have to be designed in a very proper way to maintain effectiveness, to have the effects we need on the economy," Dijsselbloem told reporters on the sidelines of a G20 meeting of finance ministers and central bankers.

He also said that in the euro zone, both the European Central Bank and euro zone finance ministers were aware of the risks that loose monetary policy, called quantitative easing (QE), entailed, but there were no immediate threats.

"The ECB has...an expansionary monetary policy allowing us to recover economically and we need to be aware of potential risks that may come from the QE policy," Dijsselbloem said.

"The ECB is very much aware of that and on the political side we are aware of that. I don't see any bubbles in Europe at the moment," he said.

(Reporting by Jan Strupczewski; Editing by Jacqueline Wong)

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