After a two-day gathering, the BoE's Monetary Policy Committee voted in favour of increasing its quantitative easing (QE) by £50 billion (60 billion euros, $80 billion) to £325 billion over a three-month period. The nine-member MPC panel also decided to keep the main interest rate at a record-low 0.50 percent, the central bank said in a statement. London's stock market and sterling were little changed followed the expected announcements, which were made as Britain's economy buckles under the combined impact of state austerity and the eurozone crisis. Also on Thursday, the European Central Bank held its key lending rate at 1.0 percent, ahead of a crucial Brussels meeting seeking to avert a potentially catastophic default by debt-laden Greece. The BoE meanwhile warned that the economic outlook remained clouded by the chronic crisis in the eurozone, which is Britain's main export market. "In the United Kingdom, the underlying pace of recovery slowed during 2011, with activity falling slightly during the final quarter," it said in the statement. "Some recent business surveys have painted a more positive picture and asset prices have risen. "But the pace of expansion in the United Kingdom's main export markets has also slowed and concerns remain about the indebtedness and competitiveness of some euro-area countries." The BoE rate has stood at 0.50 percent since March 2009 when it also began injecting £200 billion into the economy under QE. The bank opted last October to increase the amount to £275 billion in an operation due to end this month. Under QE, the central bank creates new cash that is used to purchase assets such as government and corporate bonds in the hope of giving a boost to lending and economic activity. Recent official data revealed that the economy contracted by more than expected in the fourth quarter, placing it dangerously close to another downturn. Gross domestic product (GDP) dipped 0.2 percent in the three months to December. Another quarter of contraction would place Britain in a technical recession. But official data published on Thursday painted a slighly rosier picture, showing that industrial output rose in December, when Britain's trade-in-goods deficit also fell. The BoE added that ongoing QE measures and falling inflation should help stimulate growth later in the year, despite a weaker outlook for the coming months. "A gradual strengthening of output growth later this year should be supported by a gentle recovery in household real incomes as inflation falls, together with the continued stimulus from monetary policy," it said. "But the drag from tight credit conditions and the fiscal consolidation together present a headwind. "The correspondingly weak outlook for near-term output growth means that a significant margin of economic slack is likely to persist." Recent data showed that annual inflation fell in December by the biggest amount in more than two years. The Consumer Prices Index (CPI) slowed to a rate of 4.2 percent in December from 4.8 percent in November. The BoE's main task is to keep annual inflation close to a government-set target of 2.0 percent.