Bank of England makes no changes to stimulus push

LONDON: The Bank of England said on Thursday it was keeping its benchmark interest rate at 0.1 per cent and it left unchanged the size of its bond-buying programme at 745 billion pounds ($966 billion).

The BoE's nine monetary policy-makers voted 9-0 to keep rates on hold and 9-0 in favour of making no change to its bond-buying programme.

Economists polled by Reuters had expected the BoE to hold steady at its September policy meeting. Many of them say the central bank is likely to increase the size of its bond-buying programme in November. ($1 = 0.7712 pounds)