The Bank of England held interest rates at a 15-year peak as it kept up its fight against the highest inflation among the world’s big rich economies, and it stressed that it did not expect to cut them any time soon.
In September, the BoE had said rates would need to remain “sufficiently restrictive for sufficiently long.” The decision to keep rates on hold echoed moves by the European Central Bank and the US Federal Reserve over the past week. They are also waiting to see if their strong dose of rate hike medicine will curb the world’s worst outbreak of inflation in decades.
The central bank said it now expected Britain's economy to have flatlined in the July-September period and to grow by just 0.1 per cent in the fourth quarter, with zero growth forecast for 2024 and an expansion of just 0.25 per cent in 2025.
Source: Financial Digest (financialdigest.net)