LONDON, April 9 (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said it was unfortunate that the European Central Bank had not yet resorted to quantitative easing, according to extracts from a television interview to be broadcast on Friday.
The Bank of England has already started buying up assets with newly-created money to combat the recession after cutting interest rates to a record low of 0.5 percent, but the ECB is still considering cutting borrowing costs to boost demand.
"I think we are able to deal with our problems with our own inflation target and with the action of the Bank of England has taken which unfortunately has not been possible in Europe," Brown told Al Jazeera English in comments released on Thursday.
"Quantitative easing ... the Bank actually taking a more active role in the economy...I think that is to our advantage."
Brown has hailed steps already taken by central banks around the world to tackle the downturn but has also urged policymakers to keep taking action as necessary to restore growth.
ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet said on Thursday his bank still had some leeway to cut its main interest rate from the current 1.25 percent. Last week he said the ECB's Governing Council would decide whether to take further "non-standard" steps in its monetary policy at its next policy meeting in May.
Brown said being part of the European monetary union would not have given Britain a better defence against the global downturn.
"I don't think being in the euro would have helped us at this stage," he said. "But of course in principal being in the euro is a good idea, in practice it's always been difficult to see the economies converging."
(Reporting by Matt Falloon; editing by Stephen Nisbet))