(Recasts with Deputy Governor’s comments) WARSAW, Oct 1 (Reuters) - Hungary’s central bank will raise base interest rates in further steps of 15 basis points over coming months as inflationary pressures are growing, Deputy Governor Barnabas Virag said on Friday. Virag, the rate-setter responsible for communicating the bank’s policy plans, said the tightening cycle, which began in June, would continue as long as the inflation outlook justified it. “This is a long road and I think we are far from the end,” Virag said about further hikes. Last month, the bank raised its base rate by a smaller-than-expected 15 basis points to 1.65%, slowing the pace of hikes. “The size of our September step is indicative in terms of the decisions to be taken in the coming months,” Virag said, reiterating comments made last month while adding that the bank would also act to improve the stability of the currency swap market and reduce forint liquidity. Virag earlier on Friday told a conference in Warsaw that rising inflation posed a risk to Central European economies. His remarks come a day after the Czech central bank delivered a higher-than-expected 75-basis-point rate hike to 1.50% and said that more would follow as it sought to rein in inflation. Last month’s lower-than-expected hike in Hungary sent its forint currency sharply lower. Asked about that forint decline, Virag said the bank was “more interested in more permanent trends, not in short-term volatility.” Virag said the central bank, which has already started reducing its bond purchases, would continue to exit from its QE programme. He said managing forint liquidity “in a proper way” would also be an important part of its policy response. “We have further solutions at our disposal ... (to) enhance the effectiveness of monetary policy transmission in the coming months,” he added. The bank held several FX swap tenders this week, providing banks with euros. As part of its tightening measures, the bank last month also decided to phase out its foreign-exchange swap facility providing forint liquidity. (Reporting by Anna Koper, writing by Krisztina Than Editing by Giles Elgood and John Stonestreet) Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.