UK government's overdraft at BoE remained 370 million pounds on April 8

LONDON (Reuters) - The British finance ministry's overdraft at the Bank of England remained at 370 million pounds as of April 8, a day before the facility was expanded to help the government ramp up spending to mitigate the coronavirus hit to the economy.

The update was provided by the BoE on Tuesday in a weekly announcement of the amount outstanding on the government's Ways and Means Facility.

The April 9 announcement that the facility would be extended will allow the government to borrow potentially billions of pounds directly from the BoE if it has trouble selling record amounts of debt on financial markets.

Usage of the facility previously peaked at 19.9 billion pounds in 2008 during the global financial crisis.

(Writing by William Schomberg, editing by Andy Bruce)