George Osborne said the Treasury is ready to help the Bank of England support lending in the economy as it copes with the aftermath of the Brexit vote.
“We need to look to support demand to ensure that credit flows freely,” the Chancellor of the Exchequer told Parliament on Monday.
“The Financial Policy Committee will publish its decisions tomorrow, and we stand ready at the Treasury to act in concert with the Bank should more need to be done to support Funding for Lending.”
That program, which subsidises lending by commercial banks, set up by the BOE under Mervyn King in 2012, was extended by the present governor, Mark Carney, in November and is currently intended to last until the end of January 2018.
The central bank said then that there had been a “substantial fall” in bank funding costs because of the FLS and that it had generated more than £57 billion of borrowing allowances by the middle of last year.
The BOE will release its semi-annual Financial Stability Report today, along with the latest conclusions of the FPC.
Officials plan to cut banks’ capital requirements as soon as this week, according to people with knowledge of the discussions.
© 2016 Bloomberg
