Business & Finance

Bank of England votes 7-2 to pump out extra £50bn

Published February 22, 2012 Updated February 22, 2012 11:57am

The two who voted against had wanted extra stimulus totalling £75 billion, the minutes added. All nine policymakers voted to keep the BoE's key lending rate at a record low 0.50 percent, where it has stood for almost three years.

The BoE rate has stood at 0.50 percent since March 2009 when the central bank began injecting £200 billion into the economy under a radical policy known as Quantitative Easing.

The central bank opted last October to increase the QE amount to £275 billion, before announcing on February 9 its intention to pump out an extra £50 billion -- bringing the total to £325 billion.

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.

Two members of the BoE's Monetary Policy Committee, David Miles and Adam Posen, voted at the last meeting to hike QE to £350 billion.

For these two, "there was a risk of a prolonged period of depressed demand causing (British) inflation to fall materially below the (2.0-percent) target in the medium term", the minutes said.

For the remaining seven MPC members, "it was not clear that a stimulus larger than that was warranted at the current juncture. In addition, given market expectations, a larger increase risked sending a signal that the Committee thought the economic situation was weaker than it was."

The minutes were published before the release of British growth data later this week. The Office of National Statistics is due to publish its second estimate of gross domestic product for the fourth quarter of 2011 on Friday.

The initial reading published last month said that British GDP shrank by 0.2 percent in the three months to December, driven by weakness in the production and construction sectors.

Economists warn that this could be followed by a decline in the current first quarter of 2012, which would place Britain back in recession -- defined by two successive quarters of contraction. First quarter data is due in April.

Last week meanwhile, official data showed that Britain's 12-month inflation rate fell sharply in January to a 14-month low, as the previous year's sales tax hike fell out of the year-on-year comparison.

Annual Consumer Prices Index (CPI) inflation slowed last month to 3.6 percent -- the lowest level since November 2010 and compared with 4.2 percent in December.

The Conservative-Liberal Democrat government increased value-added tax (VAT) on goods and services to 20 percent in January 2011 as it sought to slash a huge deficit that was inherited from the previous Labour administration.

The Bank of England expects annual CPI inflation to hit its 2.0 percent target in the final quarter of 2012 and to fall as low as 1.5 percent in the following year.

It also believes that Britain will likely avoid recession this year but has cautioned that the outlook is dependent on the successful resolution of the stubborn eurozone debt crisis.

Copyright AFP (Agence France-Presse), 2012