At the August Monetary Policy Statement last week, the MPC kept the OCR at 0.25 percent and expanded the LSAP programme to up to $ billion.
The Committee agreed that a lower or negative OCR, a Funding for Lending Programme (FLP), purchases of foreign assets, and interest rate swaps all provided policy optionality, to be assessed against the Committee’s five principles for alternative monetary policy tools.28 That is, they all remain on the list of possible instruments that could shape our balance sheet into the future.