The European Central Bank may need to raise interest rates again because data suggest price pressures keep building, Governing Council member Gediminas Simkus said.

September’s inflation reading came in above estimates, energy costs have been higher than predicted and the labor market remains rather strong, the Lithuanian central-bank chief said in an interview.

While a decision to hike rates at the end of the year would be based on more data, action this month can’t be excluded, he said in Bangkok, where he’s attending the International Monetary Fund meetings.

“We’ve received more evidence since September that suggest some tightening of monetary policy might be needed,” Simkus said. “From a policymaker’s perspective, you want to take decisions when you have the largest amount of data available, and the next such meeting is December. But you also can’t ignore the fact that we have a meeting in October.”The ECB already raised rates twice this year in response to the energy-price shock triggered by war in the Middle East. Markets and economists anticipate further action, though they differ over how high borrowing costs will rise.

Belgian central-bank governor Pierre Wunsch told Bloomberg Television on Wednesday that “we are probably going to have to hike again,” even if uncertainty remains high.

Simkus said that so far there aren’t any evident second-round effects from the increase in oil and gas costs, echoing earlier remarks by ECB President Christine Lagarde. But he warned that “the longer energy prices stay elevated, the higher the probability that they will spread.”A factor working in the opposite direction is the increase in sovereign yields, Simkus said, while cautioning that he’s not too worried about euro-area bond markets, where France led a recent selloff. “It’s very important to distinguish between market fragmentation and legitimate repricing of sovereign risk,” he said.

“I see the rise in French sovereign yields as a phenomenon coming particularly from the economic developments as markets are pricing the debt level, the political uncertainties and the fiscal fundamentals.”Simkus observed that “to some extent it’s normal” that different countries face different market borrowing costs. “Not every increase in sovereign yields,” he added, “should be interpreted as market fragmentation.”

With its Transmission Protection Instrument, the ECB has a yet-unused crisis-fighting tool. Simkus signaled that at least for now, there’s no need to activate it. “I do believe that things will be settled,” he said.

“I definitely don’t see a role for the ECB at this junction.”Simkus touched on the separate issue of the ECB minimum reserve requirement. Banks must currently hold 1% of specific liabilities, mainly customers’ deposits, in a special account at the central bank that isn’t remunerated.

Discussions about the requirement have lingered for a while. By increasing it, the region’s central banks would save on interest payments to banks, helping them address losses accrued as a result of quantitative easing.

It’s a “structural part” of the monetary-policy framework, he argued, rather than an “actively managed instrument.”“We shouldn’t change the reserve requirement in response to economic and monetary conditions,” Simkus said, while adding that “there’s nothing wrong with discussing it” and that the current level isn’t “carved in stone.”