"[Manufacturing data] give hope that the first-quarter outturn will be better than people even feared just a few weeks ago"
- George Buckley, chief U.K. economist at Deutsche Bank AG
The Bank of England injected another 50 billion pounds into the U.K. economy and maintained key lending rate at record low of 0.5 per cent to protect fragile economic recovery.
"They're worried about risks to growth and they remain confident that inflation will fall below their target," said Philip Rush, an economist at Nomura International Plc in London. "They need to explain why they're still easing when the general environment seems to have improved so much."
In a separate report, the Office for National Statistics said manufacturing production rose 1 per cent in December from November, when it declined 0.1 per cent.
The data "give hope that the first-quarter outturn will be better than people even feared just a few weeks ago," said George Buckley, chief U.K. economist at Deutsche Bank AG in London. Still, "the recovery is very fragile. There's huge event risk from Europe still in the mix."
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