LONDON, March 20 (Xinhua) -- Bank of England (BoE), the central bank of Britain, has maintained the bank rate at 0.5 percent but opinions on further quantitative easing stimulus funds are divided, according to minutes of a recent policy-making meeting released on Wednesday.
The BoE's nine-member Monetary Policy Committee voted 6-3 to keep its QE cash stimulus amount at 375 billion pounds (about 566 billion U.S. dollars), repeating January's voting pattern, according to minutes from the committee's March 6-7 meeting.
For the third month in a row, outgoing governor Mervyn King was joined by fellow committee members David Miles and Paul Fisher in calling for a further 25 billion pounds to a total of 400 billion pounds in stimulus cash as Britain faced the prospect of its third recession in less than five years.
Incoming BoE governor Mark Carney, the Canadian central bank chief, is expected to takes up his role in July.
According to the minutes, indicators of activity growth had been mixed, but the economy was likely to broadly flat in the first three months of this year.
The latest official data showed British 12-month inflation rose to 2.8 percent in February on the back of rising domestic energy costs and transport prices, and unemployment rate stayed at 7.8 percent in the three months to January.
The number of unemployed people increased to 2.52 million between November last year to January 2013, an increase of 7,000 from the previous three months, said the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
|
