Bank of England Chief Repeats Stimulus Call

Bank of England governor Mervyn King called again for more quantitative easing stimulus cash, minutes from this month's policy meeting showed on Wednesday.

The BoE's nine-member Monetary Policy Committee voted 6-3 to keep its QE cash stimulus amount at £375 billion ($573 billion, 435 billion euros), repeating the voting pattern from February and March, according to minutes from their April 3-4 gathering.

For the third month in a row, outgoing boss King was joined by fellow MPC members David Miles and Paul Fisher in calling for an extra £25 billion in QE stimulus cash to encourage economic activity that slumped at the end of last year.

King will step down at the end of June. He will be replaced by Canadian central bank chief Mark Carney.

Recent official data revealed that British gross domestic product (GDP) shrank 0.3 percent in the fourth quarter of 2012 compared with the previous three months.

Another contraction in the first quarter of 2013 would place Britain in its third recession in under four years. GDP data for this period is due for publication on April 25.