BoE holds rates, to complete QE plan in 2 months

The Bank of England left interest rates unchanged at a record low of 0.5 percent on Thursday, as expected, and said it would take another two months to complete its programme of quantitative easing.

This was the first month that the central bank's Monetary Policy Committee kept interest rates on hold since last September, having cut them by a total of 4.5 percentage points to tackle Britain's first economic recession since the early 1990s.

It signalled last month that borrowing costs would not go any lower but it would now resort to pumping money directly into the economy — so-called quantitative easing — to boost demand.

"The Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee today voted to maintain the official Bank Rate paid on commercial bank reserves at 0.5%. The Committee also voted to continue with the programme, announced on 5 March, of asset purchases totalling 75 billion pounds financed by the issuance of central bank reserves," it said in a statement.

"The Committee noted that since its previous meeting a total of just over 26 billion pounds of asset purchases had been made and that it would take a further two months to complete that programme."