LONDON, Oct 8 (Reuters) - Uncertainty about the Bank of England's quantitative easing policy poses a risk to sentiment on the British government bond market, the head of the UK Debt Management Office said in an interview published on Thursday.
Earlier on Thursday -- but after the interview in the Independent newspaper was published -- the BoE said its planned 175 billion pounds of asset purchases, mostly gilts, would be complete by next month and gave no indication of whether it intended to do more.
DMO Chief Executive Robert Stheeman, who is responsible for selling a record 220 billion pounds ($354 billion) of gilts this fiscal year said that markets could cope with an end to QE but uncertainty about its future could be damaging.
'I think there will be probably at one point in the not too distant future a lot of uncertainty creeping into the market about the future of QE,' Stheeman was quoted as saying.
'Even if (the BoE) decided to stop, I don't think that's a downside risk. The downside risk is the uncertainty,' he added.
Stheeman said market volatility, rather than the total volume of gilts to be sold, was key in causing debt auctions to fail, noting that his last failed auction in March came in the run-up to Britain's budget.
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