The minutes from the latest Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting are due on Wednesday morning, with markets waiting to hear the reasons behind the Bank of England's (BoE) decision to hold rates and quantitative easing (QE).
The MPC voted on December 6th to maintain the official Bank Rate at 0.5% and its current asset purchase programme at £375bn.
According to Investec analyst Victoria Clarke, the MPC decided to hold fire on more money printing as last month's plan to transfer £35bn of coupons from the Asset Purchase Facility to the Treasury "would have a similar effect to more QE".
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"Arguably the weak recent run of UK economic data edges the BoE in the direction of further policy easing at some point in the New Year, damping (at least domestically driven) inflation pressures and potentially implying inflation could drop back a touch more quickly in the medium term," Clarke said.
"However, the more tricky question for the BoE right now, perhaps more so than its view of inflation's path, is whether the Bank is confident enough that QE would provide a sufficient boost to the economy overall, under current macro conditions."
Analysts at Barclays Research expect the MPC to have voted unanimously in favour to maintain interest rates, unchanged from the last meeting. The vote to keep QE at £375bn is also expected to be unchanged from the November meeting, with eight voting in favour and one against (David Miles voted last month to increase QE by £25bn).
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