BoE keeps its target for asset purchases

THE Bank of England has maintained its target for asset purchases as policy makers gauged the capacity of their second round of stimulus to ward off the danger posed by Europe’s debt crisis.

The nine-member Monetary Policy Committee, led by governor Mervyn King, held the ceiling for so-called quantitative easing at £275 billion (€322bn), as forecast by all 38 economists in a Bloomberg News survey. The bank, which expanded QE by £75bn (€87.8bn) last month, said the current purchases will take another three months to complete and the “scale of the programme will be kept under review.”

Britain’s central bank has also kept its key interest rate at a record low of 0.5%, as predicted by all 52 economists in a separate poll. The pound erased its decline against the dollar after the announcement, up 0.3% yesterday.