Mario Draghi has hit back at critics of his plan to revive the eurozone’s recovery by buying hundreds of billions of euros worth of asset-backed securities, calling on governments to support his move by guaranteeing the riskier parts of the assets.The European Central Bank announced this month that it would begin buying packages of loans sliced and diced into products known as ABS to help free up banks’ balance sheets and spur lending.However, the plan has triggered concerns from the Bundesbank and others that the ECB is taking on too much risk.In a paper to be presented this weekend at a finance ministers’ meeting, Mr Draghi, the ECB president, will also face resistance from Paris and Berlin over the central bank’s proposal that governments should guarantee the riskier tranches of the securities it purchases to reduce its exposure.Mr Draghi played down these concerns in a speech in Milan on Thursday.“The provision of public guarantees should be considered to support lending [to small and medium-sized enterprises, or SMEs], as other countries do, such as the US,” he said.The move to revive the eurozone’s securitisation market buoyed investor sentiment and triggered the sharpest fall in the single currency since the height of the eurozone crisis, easing the ECB’s task of raising inflation – at a five-year low of 0.3 per cent – towards its target of just below 2 per cent.Some on the ECB’s policy making governing council have objected to the central bank’s plan.The dissenters, who include Jens Weidmann, the Bundesbank’s president, believe that the plan to buy ABS is unnecessary as there is already enough demand for the better-quality parts of securitisations.The ECB president said that default rates on senior tranches of securities backed by repackaged mortgage loans outstanding since mid-2007 were just 0.12 per cent in the eurozone, compared with more than a fifth in the US.Default rates on instruments backed by consumer and SME loans were also below 1 per cent throughout the worst years of the crisis.