Investing.com - Minutes from the Bank of England’s policy meeting showed that all nine members were in favor of leaving the key interest rate at a record low of 0.5%, as Ian McCafferty dropped his call for an interest rate hike for the first time in six meetings.
Market analysts expected the central bank to vote 8-1 to keep policy steady.
The BOE said it was holding the benchmark interest rate at 0.50%, in a widely expected move. The rate has been held at that level since March 2009. The central bank also said it was to maintain the stock of asset purchases financed by the issuance of central bank reserves at £375 billion.
All nine members were in favor of making no changes to the central bank's £375 billion asset-purchase program.
According to the minutes, “the MPC judges the risks to the central projection to be skewed a little to the downside in the near term, reflecting the possibility of greater persistence of low inflation.”
“Low realized inflation will continue to moderate the increase in wage pressure in the near term,” the minutes added.
Expectations for a rate hike by the Bank of England have been pushed back to early-2017 due to a recent spate of weaker than expected data and amid uncertainty over a referendum on whether or not Britain should stay in the European Union.
GBP/USD was trading at 1.4565 from around 1.4595 ahead of the announcement, while EUR/GBP was at 0.7664 from 0.7655 earlier.
Meanwhile, European stock markets were broadly higher. London’s FTSE 100 rose 1.15%, the EURO STOXX 50 advanced 0.5%, France's CAC 40 tacked on 0.2%, while Germany's DAX inched up 0.4%.