Trichet comments after ECB rate rise

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - The following are comments European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet made at a news conference on Thursday after the ECB Governing Council raised its benchmark interest rate by a quarter percentage point to 4.25 percent.

FROM QUESTION AND ANSWER SESSION:

"If and when we have something new to give to the market we will certainly do that, as we always did in the past ... in a clear fashion that will permit us to be as predictable in the future as we have been in the past ...

"We trust that this move upwards is the kind of move that was necessary to permit us to continue to tell our fellow citizens: You can have confidence that we will deliver price stability in the medium term despite the very difficult circumstances in which we are, because of the very, very strong increases in the price of a number of commodities..."

On commodity prices:

"We still have a number of anomalies. We have anomalies when we have big level of subsidies ... A lot of progress has to be made in this direction ... Otherwise we will still have demand which will not be correct ... And we also tell the suppliers that to the extent that part of the present prices are coming from a cartel this is very, very abnormal ... When we have a demand-driven increase of prices, then it plays a role in the automatic stabilisation of global growth, but if we have a supplier-driven artificial scarcity then it is very grey and it has an impact which could be very grave.

"Let me also say that ... there are a number of industrialised countries that are preventing drilling as it could be, that are preventing exploration of new fields as it could be. And they are also contributing of course to the global difficulty in which we are. And then I will also say very clearly that markets have to be as transparent and as competitive as possible..."

Q: - Would you define present situation as "stagflation"? In the world or euro area?

"I think that there is nobody saying at the present moment that at a global level we are embarking on a stagflation episode.