LONDON ? The Bank of England's rate-setting Monetary Policy Committee appears to be in no hurry to pump more money into the British economy as it assesses the impact of its recent stimulus in the face of rising concerns over the future of the eurozone, the country's most important trading bloc.
Minutes to its last meeting, published Wednesday, showed that the nine members voted unanimously to make no change to its October commitment to plough in another 75 billion pounds ($117 billion) into the British economy. The MPC also voted to keep the benchmark interest rate at the all-time low of 0.5 percent.
The Bank has said it will take around three months to make the asset purchases as part of the program, known as quantitative easing.
Analysts believe, however, that more stimulus is likely next year especially if the eurozone economy falls back into recession in the wake of a debt crisis that's shown signs of intensifying over the past few weeks. The rate-setters are clearly concerned about what's going on in the eurozone, indicating that it's the biggest cause for concern for the British economy.
"Concerns over the sustainability of the public and external debt positions of some euro-area countries had led to increases in the cost of borrowing for those countries and widespread falls in confidence," the minutes said.
"While the worst risks had not so far crystallized, the threat of their doing so had increased, exacerbating the already severe strains in bank funding markets and financial markets more generally," the minutes added.
The minutes said it was uncertain how the asset purchases would affect demand, and how much any increased spending would be blunted by government budget cutting, tight credit and restrained consumer demand.
The committee also noted, however, that the markets are already reacting to expectations of more stimulus within months.
"We stick with our call of another 50 billion pounds in February, but put the chances of any move before February as very low indeed," said Richard Barwell, an economist at Royal Bank of Scotland.
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