By David Milliken

LONDON (Reuters) -The Bank of England on Tuesday lowered slightly to 115 billion pounds ($155 billion) its estimate of the net loss that Britain’s finance ministry will have to pay to cover the central bank’s bond-buying programme.

When the BoE began quantitative easing in 2009 to boost the economy after the global financial crisis, the finance ministry agreed to cover any losses and take any profits.

Gilt purchases ran until late 2021 – after extra rounds to support the economy through the shocks of Brexit and the COVID-19 pandemic – before the BoE put the 875 billion-pound programme into reverse in February, 2022. It is currently running down the stockpile at a pace of 100 billion pounds a year.

While Britain’s finance ministry made a 124 billion-pound profit from t

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