Euro zone underlying inflation needs time to rise: Liikanen

HELSINKI (Reuters) - Underlying inflation in the euro zone will need time to accelerate and support the rise in headline inflation, European Central Bank policymaker Erkki Liikanen said in a presentation to the Finnish parliament on Tuesday.

In slides prepared for a hearing, Liikanen said there was an exceptional amount of uncertainty about how unconventional monetary policy worked but argued that easy monetary policy remained necessary for inflation to rise back to the ECB's target of almost 2 percent.

(Reporting by Jussi Rosendahl; Writing by Balazs Koranyi)