Bank of England maintains ultra-low interest rate

The Bank of England (BoE) Thursday voted to maintain the benchmark interest rate at 0.5 percent.

The central bank of Britain also voted to maintain the stock of purchased assets, or quantitative easing policy scheme, at 375 billion pounds (570 billion U.S. dollars).

Last month, data from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) showed that the British inflation rate fell to 0.5 percent in the year to December 2014, nearly marking a 15-year low. The main contributions to the fall came from low oil prices.

Falling inflation made some analysts believe the BoE would not raise interest rates this year.

During the monetary policy meeting last month, nine policy makers of Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) of the BoE voted unanimously to keep benchmark interest rate on hold. But over the past months, there was a split decision among the MPC.

The previous change in bank rate was a reduction of 0.5 percentage points to 0.5 percent on March 5, 2009. A program of asset purchases financed by the issuance of central bank reserves was initiated that same day.

The previous change in the size of that program was an increase of 50 billion pounds to the current level on July 5, 2012, noted the bank. (1 pound = 1.52 U.S. dollars) Endit