"It will be whichever month they get a stack of weak data"
- Michael Saunders at Citi
The Bank of England is widely expected to inject more money into the struggling economy this year, and the announcement of the increase of asset purchase programme may be made during March's Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting. During the last month's meeting three MPC members were in the minority voting to buy additional 25 billion pounds of British government bonds. The current amount of bank's stimulus is 375 billion pounds, and another injection of 25 billion pounds is expected. Also Thursday, the BOE's Quarterly Bulletin showed that public finances are going to benefit by a net 17 billion pounds ($25 billion) from transfers from the Bank of England's asset-purchase programme. The report showed that Britain's economy is expected to expand by 0.2% this quarter with that meagre growth enough to stop it from slipping into recession.
"It will be whichever month they get a stack of weak data," said Michael Saunders at Citi, who has long expected further stimulus and added that the Bank would eventually pump in 450 billion pounds in total.
"Against that backdrop, several of the short-term tail risks to the outlook for world growth appeared to diminish," the BoE said. "There was an increase in investors' willingness to bear risk, providing support to a broad range of assets."
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