LONDON, March 31 - Britons' appetite for debt showed no signs of abating in February as they continued to take advantage of the lowest interest rate in nearly 50 years, official figures showed on Monday. The Bank of England said that net consumer credit grew by 1.49 billion pounds in February, higher than the 1.3 billion pound rise expected by analysts and also seen in the previous month. This amounted to a rise of 0.9 percent on the month, faster than the January increase, but the annual rate of increase of 14.2 percent was the lowest since December 2001. Growth in mortgage lending slowed in February though remained strong. The BoE said lending secured on dwellings rose by 7.2 billion pounds compared with an increase of 7.7 billion in January. This was a rise of 13.6 percent on the year, the biggest since the series began in April 1993.
Approvals, loans agreed but not yet made and usually a more forward-looking indicator of the housing market, rose to 109,000 from 108,000, perhaps in response to the BoE's surprise decision to cut interest rates to a 48-year low of 3.75 percent in February. Still, approvals were still well down on the 120,000-plus figures seen in several months last year. The BoE also cautioned that the approvals figures may be influenced by the number of working days in the month. ,br> Total net personal sector lending rose by 8.7 billion pounds in February compared with 9.0 billion in the previous month, an increase of 13.7 percent on the year, matching January's record high. Separately, the BoE said that growth in M0, narrow money, slowed to 0.6 percent in February from 1.1 percent in the month before. This took M0 growth up 6.5 percent on the year.//