LONDON, Jan 14 (Reuters) - Quantitative easing was "not on our agenda" at present, Britain's Business Secretary Peter Mandelson said on Wednesday.
"We have not got to the point of zero interest rates in which situation this question might arise," he told Channel 4 News.
"What we are trying to do is constantly to design to craft interventions by the government with the banks that will ease the credit shortage that will make more working capital available to support existing and new lending."
Quantitative easing, literally boosting the money supply, as undertaken by Japan in the early 2000s may be some way off for now but is crossing the radar of central banks all around the world. The U.S. Federal Reserve has already taken steps to buy up assets.
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"As an example, were the Bank of England to buy assets, were it to buy commercial paper, were it buy gilts, were it to be active in the market in the way that I see the American authorities being active in the market, I think that would be quite a positive development," he said.
But any such move in Britain would require government approval and finance minister Alistair Darling killed speculation earlier this month that such policies were imminent.
"Nobody is talking about printing money," he told reporters at the time.
The government announced plans on Wednesday to help small and medium-sized businesses refinance up to 20 billion pounds of debt under a package of measures to help bank lending.
Under the scheme, the government will provide banks with guarantees to cover half the risk on companies' day-to-day needs worth up to 20 billion pounds for companies with a turnover of up to half a billion pounds.
Another measure was the enterprise finance guarantee scheme, a one billion pound guarantee for small, credit-worthy companies with an annual turnover of up to 25 million pounds.
Under the scheme, loans of up to 1 million pounds over a period of up to 10 years will be 75 percent guaranteed by government and 25 percent guaranteed by banks.
The first payment under this scheme will be "paid shortly," Mandelson said.
(Reporting by Avril Ormsby; Editing by Kenneth Barry)