Two Bank of England members voted for more stimulus

The Minutes of the latest Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee meeting, which was held on the 7th and 8th of March suggested that the decision was NOT unanimous. Regarding the Bank Rate, the Committee voted unanimously to keep the rate unchanged at 0.5%. Regarding the stock of asset purchases on the contrary, seven members voted in favour of the proposition to keep the programme at L325 billion, while two members (Miles and Posen) preferred to increase the size of asset purchases by a further L25 billion to a total of L350 billion. The two members continued to think that a larger monetary stimulus was warranted to reduce the risk that persistently weak growth would damage the future supply capacity of the economy. The fact that two members of the Committee favoured more asset purchases was the biggest surprise from the Minutes. Overall the Committee judged that recent data had evolved in line with its expectations and there had been little to change the balance of risks to UK activity and inflation. The Bank of England recognized that inflation eased considerably over the previous months, but warned on risks surrounding the outlook for crude oil prices. Overall however there were little changes in the view regarding the inflation and growth outlook and there were no suggestions that more QE is off the table, on the contrary, as some members voted in favour of more QE.