Rates Remain On Hold
4th August 2011
Rates Remain On Hold
Interest rates will stay at 0.5% and the programme of quantitative easing (QE) will remain unaltered at £200bn, the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) have decided on the 4rd August 2011.
The official Bank of England base rate paid on commercial bank reserves will stay at 0.5%. In the same meeting, the Committee also voted to keep the stock of asset purchases financed by the issuance of central bank reserves at £200 billion.
Most economists expected that interest rates would not change due to slow economic growth.
A recent poll of 63 economists pointed to only a 30% chance that the Committee will raise rates this year.
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