LONDON (Reuters) – The Bank of England governor Mark Carney and his successor, Andrew Bailey, spoke at a press conference after the central bank unexpectedly cut interest rates by half a percentage point to 0.25% on Wednesday.
Below are the highlights of their comments:
IMPACT OF CORONAVIRUS
“The Bank of England’s role is to help UK businesses and households manage through an economic shock that could prove large and sharp but should be temporary,” Carney said.
“That’s why the Bank is announcing today a comprehensive and timely package of measures to help UK households and businesses bridge across the economic disruption caused by COVID-19. These measures will help keep firms in business and people in jobs and they will prevent a temporary disruption from causing longer-lasting economic harm.”
ON THE MAXIMUM IMPACT
“The Bank is coordinating its actions with those that the Chancellor will announce later today in the budget in order to ensure that our initiatives are complementary and that they will collectively have maximum impact consistent with our independent responsibilities,” Carney said.
ON THE IMPACT ON TRADING CONDITIONS
“We have anecdotal evidence that we’re building up through our agency network and our direct contacts with businesses, where we have seen a sharp fall in trading conditions, particularly in retail, consumer discretionary items over the course of the last week,” Carney said.
“Even prior to that we were beginning to see supply chain disruptions in the manufacturing sector as well.”
ON THE IMPACT ON BANKING SYSTEM
“Such disruption to the economy should have lower impact on the core banking system than the recent stress tests run by the Bank of England have shown the system can withstand,” Bailey said.
“Those stress tests demonstrated that banks would be able to continue to lend to households and businesses even while absorbing the effects of substantial and a prolonged economic downturns, in both the UK and the global economies, as well as falls in asset prices much larger than experienced in recent weeks.”
ON FUTURE ACTION
“In terms of forward looking, I will just note the statement that the bank will take all necessary further actions,” Carney said.
“There is a regular schedule of meetings and the MPC will be meeting again late this month, there’s no change to that, this is a special – this has been a special meeting and a special action but it doesn’t change the schedule in any sense…this will be under constant review and consideration,”
Reporting by UK Bureau; editing by Kate Holton
