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LONDON - Bank of England policymakers recently voted 7-2 in favour of pumping out another £50 billion (62 billion euros, $79 billion) of new cash to help Britain's recession-hit economy, minutes showed on Wednesday.
BoE Governor Mervyn King and six other central bank members voted to increase the so-called Quantitative Easing (QE) stimulus programme to a total of £375 billion, according to minutes from a policy meeting held on July 4-5.
Two members of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), Spencer Dale and Ben Broadbent, had voted against altering QE.
Policymakers had meanwhile voted unanimously to keep the BoE's main interest rate at record-low 0.50 percent, where it has stood for more than three years.
The British central bank insisted in the minutes that the eurozone's sovereign debt crisis had worsened the economic outlook.
Britain is not a member of the eurozone but relies on the bloc for a large amount of its trade.
"The near-term outlook for GDP growth had weakened. It now seemed possible that output would be roughly flat over 2012 as a whole, implying a period of two years where there had been little or no economic growth," the minutes read.
"Global demand had slowed, and the near-term outlook was weaker than the committee had assumed in May, largely due to the impact of the euro-area financial crisis.
"And, notwithstanding the initial positive market reaction to the political developments within the euro area, very substantial risks there remained.
"These could, if they crystallised, have a considerable impact on economic activity in the United Kingdom and the stability of the global banking system.
"There were increasing signs that the threat of a disorderly resolution of the financial tensions in the euro area was affecting growth at home," the minutes added.
Under QE, the BoE creates new cash to purchase assets such as government and corporate bonds with the aim of boosting lending and economic output.
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