The Bank of England left interest rates unchanged at a record low of 0.5% on Thursday, as expected, and said it would continue with its Stg 75 billion asset purchase scheme to boost the economy.
This was the first month that the central bank's Monetary Policy Committee kept interest rates on hold since September, having cut them by a total of 4.5 percentage points to tackle Britain's first economic recession since the early 1990s.
The bank signalled in March that borrowing costs would not go any lower but it would now resort to pumping money directly into the economy - so-called quantitative easing - to boost demand.
