LONDON, Sept. 10 (Xinhua) -- The Bank of England (BOE) decided on Thursday to hold the short-term interest rates at the record low of 0.5 percent for the sixth consecutive month.

    In a news release issued after BOE' s policy-making body finished its two-day meeting, the bank said that its Monetary Policy Committee voted to maintain the official bank rates paid on commercial banks at 0.5 percent.

    The Bank of England has been keeping the short-term interest rates at a record low since last March in a bid to spur the economy which has been in recession since spring of 2008.

    The BOE also said that it would continue to pump up to 175 billion pounds (289 billion U.S. dollars) into the economy under the so-called quantitative easing policy, but that it would not extend the extraordinary monetary policy.

    Recent economic data suggested that the UK economy has begun to climb out of recession, but the Bank of England has warned several times that recovery would be "slow and protracted".

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