The European Central Bank on Monday along with the national central banks of the eurozone started buying bonds as part of a long-awaited purchase programme to kick-start inflation and stimulate growth in the single currency area.
"The ECB and Eurosystem national central banks have, as previously announced, started purchases under the Public Sector Purchase Programme," the ECB announced via the micro-blogging site Twitter.
Earlier, a spokesman for the German central bank or Bundesbank confirmed that it had been "active in the market since 9:25 am (0825 GMT)."
Details about the size and make-up of the purchases were not immediately available.
ECB chief Mario Draghi had announced last week that the central bank would officially launch on Monday its bond purchase programme known as quantitative easing or QE.
Under the programme, central banks plan to buy around 60 billion euros (USD 65 billion) of public and private bonds each month at least until September 2016.
The move comes as traditional efforts to boost sluggish economic activity in the 19-nation eurozone have been exhausted through interest rate cuts that have brought borrowing costs to nearly zero.
The bank is also turning to QE as the eurozone faces growing threats of deflation, in which falling prices lead consumers to put off purchases in expectation they will drop further, sparking a damaging cycle of falling production, job creation and prices.At the ECB`s policy meeting last week, Draghi insisted that the QE programme, combined with the series of other liquidity measures, was already having a positive effect, bringing down borrowing costs for firms and households alike.
His confidence was backed up by an upward revision of the ECB`s growth forecasts.
But analysts said it was too early to gauge the effect of the purchases just yet.
The effect "is unlikely to become obvious on day one of the purchases. That is more likely to be a question of months," said Commerzbank analyst Ulrich Leuchtmann.
Following strong gains in recent weeks, European stock markets were mostly lower on Monday.
The euro, on the other hand, hit a 11.5-year low against the dollar, while bond yields also fell.
Analysts expressed scepticism as to whether the QE programme would really have the positive effect that the central bank hopes.
"(We) doubt very much that the new policy will prompt a meaningful economic recovery or counter the threat of deflation as the ECB hopes," said Capital Economics economist Jennifer McKeown.
Commerzbank economist Joerg Kraemer said there was a "non-negligible likelihood that the ECB will be forced to expand its bond-purchase programme."
"We can well imagine that ... the ECB would increase its monthly purchase volume," Kraemer said.
Government bonds, in particular from the core countries, could soon become scarce because domestic banks and insurance companies as well as foreign central banks "have little incentive to sell their holdings to the ECB," the expert said.
