The Bank of England’s deputy governor for monetary policy has told the BBC it would be “foolish to pre-announce” a date for an interest rate increase.
On Thursday, the Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee voted to keep interest rates at their current historic low of 0.5%.
Deputy governor Ben Broadbent said the Committee had no specific time in mind for a rise and comments by governor Mark Carney had been misinterpreted.
The cost of borrowing has remained unchanged for 78 months.
The ultra-low interest rate regime has boosted the housing market as homeowners enjoy record low mortgages rates, but penalised savers whose returns have dwindled to almost nothing.
Speaking to Radio 5 live’s Wake up to Money programme, Mr Broadbent said: “We [the MPC] are responding to things that are essentially… unpredictable.
“And that means that it would not just be impossible, it would be foolish to pre-announce some fixed date of interest rate changes.”
Mr Broadbent said he saw no “urgency” to increase interest rates at present.
He added: “The economy clearly is recovering, but we had the most almighty financial crisis and there is still a bit of spare capacity left.
“There is not that much inflationary pressure at the moment, [although] we expect that to build over time.”
via BBC
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Alfonso Esparza
trader focused on North America and emerging markets. He has been published by The MarketWatch, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal and The Globe and Mail, and he also appears regularly as a guest commentator on networks including Bloomberg and BNN. He holds a finance degree from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM) and an MBA with a specialization on financial engineering and marketing from the University of Toronto.
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