MNI BRIEF: Vaccine Could Reduce Economy Scarring: BOE Ramsden

It is "not immediately clear" that an announced successful Covid vaccine merits an upward revision to the Bank of England's latest economic forecasts, Deputy Governor Dave Ramsden said Tuesday, although he accepted the news could reduce the risks of long-term economic scarring.

The BOE had already assumed that the direct hit on the economy from Covid would ease, and that activity would pick-up, next year. Ramsden said that the GBP150 billion of further quantitative easing approved by the Monetary Policy Committee in November was a risk management exercise, aimed at preventing downside risks materialising including the possibility of a sharper than anticipated rise in unemployment. He downplayed how much more monetary policy could achieve, saying there were limits to what it could do to prevent scarring in the face of economic change.