LONDON (Reuters) – The Bank of England is looking more urgently at options such as negative interest rates and buying riskier assets to prop up the country’s economy to fight the coronavirus crisis, the BoE’s chief economist was quoted as saying.
The Telegraph newspaper said Andy Haldane refused to rule out the possibility of taking interest rates below zero and buying riskier assets under its bond-buying programme.
“The economy is weaker than a year ago and we are now at the effective lower bound, so in that sense it’s something we’ll need to look at – are looking at – with somewhat greater immediacy,” he said in an interview. “How could we not be?”
(Writing by William Schomberg; Editing by Daniel Wallis)
