Britain maintains benchmark interest rate at 0.5%

British central bank, the Bank of England (BoE) announced Thursday that it would continued to keep its benchmark interest rate at historic low level of 0.5 percent. The Monetary Policy Committee of the central bank also voted at a meeting held on Thursday to maintain the stock of asset purchase finance by the insurance of central bank reserves at 375 billion pounds. The British central bank has kept the benchmark interest rate at 0.5 percent since March 2009. BoE said early August that it would keep the interest rate at record low 0.5 percent until British unemployment drops to 7 percent or below. BoE governor Mark Carney said the bank rate would be kept at 0.5 percent, unless inflation threatened to get out of control or there was a danger to financial stability. Unemployment in Britain is forecast to fall only slowly from its current level of 7.8 percent of the workforce, with the central bank expecting it to average 7.1 percent in the third quarter of 2016.