国际英语资讯:Bank rates to rise sooner than markets expect: Bank of England governor_时事

国际英语资讯:Bank rates to rise sooner than markets expect: Bank of England governor

"With the economy seemingly now on a firmer footing, borne out by a modest upgrading of the 2018 GDP growth forecast in the Inflation Report and slack limited and diminishing, the MPC believes there is a reduced case to tolerate above target inflation.

"Specifically, the minutes observe that if the economy develops as now expected in the February Inflation Report monetary policy would need to be tightened" Archer said.

INFLATION REMAINS ABOVE TARGET

Key to the BoE's rate-decision-making process is inflation, and Thursday also saw the release of the quarterly inflation report.

The BoE's primary economic target is to keep inflation at 2 percent, but the report says that the high rate of inflation, currently at 3 percent, could rise a little more and will certainly remain above the target level in the coming months.

Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation was 0.5 percent at the time of the Brexit referendum vote in June 2016, and the surprise vote by Britain to quit the European Union (EU) deeply troubled foreign exchange markets who sent sterling into a sharp downward plunge from 1.48 U.S. dollars to 1.22 U.S. dollars.

This sharp fall has been good for exporters, as the BoE's inflation report noted, but has fuelled the steep rise in inflation through higher commodity and supply chain costs as well as more expensive imports.

The BoE now sees CPI inflation falling back to 2.4 percent by end-2018, 2.2 percent by end-2019 and 2.1 percent by end-2020. Inflation is seen stabilizing at 2.1 percent in the first quarter of 2021.