The increase in the size of the BoE’s asset-purchase programme took it to 895 billion pounds, 50 billion pounds more than expected by most economists. The central bank said that would give it enough firepower to stretch its buying of government bonds through to the end of 2021, but the purchases could be sped up if needed.
On the day England began a four-week lockdown to curb a second wave of COVID-19, the BoE said it was still looking into the pros and cons of taking interest rates negative, but gave no update on the process.
"If the outlook for inflation weakens, the Committee stands ready to take whatever additional action is necessary to achieve its remit," the BoE said as it cut its growth forecasts, and now expects the Britain economy to shrink by a record 11% in 2020 overall, more than the 9.5% it had forecast in March; the outlook for 2021 was also cut."
No comments:
Post a Comment