The Bank of England looks set to leave interest rates steady on Thursday for the first time since September while it focuses on a 75 billion pound ($110 billion) asset-buying programme to get the economy out of recession.
The central bank's Monetary Policy Committee cut rates to a record low of 0.5 percent last month and indicated it was unlikely to go any lower.
That leaves quantitative easing (QE) — buying assets with newly-created money — as its main ammunition to stimulate demand, cap long-term borrowing costs and avert the threat of deflation. "Rates left unchanged is a given," said Malcolm Barr, UK economist at J.P. Morgan. "What is less obvious is whether the Monetary Policy Committee will offer some clarity on QE as the decision on rates is announced."
Gilts strongly outperformed euro zone government debt on Thursday, as traders hoped that the Bank would issue a strong reaffirmation of its policy of gilt purchases.
When it announced its gilt-buying programme last month, Britain's central bank said it would take around three months to meet its 75 billion pound target.
Judging the success of the scheme will take considerably longer. Money supply and lending figures for March will not be published until May 1 and it may take many months for the measures to feed through to inflation.
Bank policymakers have indicated they have the right to increase or scale back the programme as required, but few expect any major changes at this early point.
All 65 economists polled by Reuters last week predicted UK interest rates would remain on hold at 0.5 percent this week and most did not expect any change to the QE target.
LONG ROAD TO RECOVERY
Britain's economy tipped into a deep recession in the second half of last year and is expected to contract by 3 percent in 2009, its worst performance since World War Two.
Some of February's lending figures have been encouraging, suggesting credit conditions may have eased slightly even before the QE programme began.
Britain's goods trade gap with countries outside the European Union narrowed much more than expected in February as exports rose and imports fell, in a sign sterling weakness may finally be having an impact.
Official data on Thursday from the Office for National Statistics also showed the first annual fall in PPI input prices since August 2007 as the cost of crude oil has plummeted.
However, even if the pace of contraction eases, it could be a long road to recovery as falling house prices and rising unemployment risk further weakening banks' capital buffers.
"There are tentative signs of improvement in mortgage approvals, money growth and manufacturing," said Michael Saunders, UK economist at Citi. "However, credit availability remains poor, banks assets continue to shrink and housing activity is still very weak."
Saunders said he expected the BoE to announce no change to interest rates. The only question, he said, was whether the BoE would opt for a more flexible approach to its asset purchases.
So far it has chosen to buy gilts with a maturity of between five and 25 years, avoiding short-dated gilts which are popular with foreign central banks and ultra-long issues so as to minimise the impact on pension deficits.
Its purchases of corporate debt have been targeted at highly-rated companies and some analysts have argued it could influence corporate borrowing costs more effectively if it accepted more credit risk.
