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News Release - Bank of England maintains Bank Rate at 0.5% and the size of the Asset Purchase Programme at £325 billion

08 March 2012

​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 its programme of asset purchases totalling £325 billion financed by the issuance of central bank reserves.

The Committee expects the announced programme of asset purchases to take another two months to complete. The scale of the programme will be kept under review.

The minutes of the meeting will be published at 9.30am on Wednesday 21 March.

Notes to Editors

The previous change in Bank Rate was a reduction of 0.5 percentage points to 0.5% on 5 March 2009. A programme of asset purchases financed by the issuance of central bank reserves was initiated on 5 March 2009. The previous change in the size of that programme was an increase of £50 billion to a total of £325 billion on 9 February 2012.

Information on the Asset Purchase Facility can be found on the Bank of England website at http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetaryp....

The Bank will continue to offer to purchase high-quality private sector assets on behalf of the Treasury, financed by the issue of Treasury bills, in line with the arrangements announced on 29 January 2009 and 29 November 2011.