LONDON: The Bank of England has kept interest rates at a record low of 0.5% since March 2009 and markets are on tenterhooks about when they will be hiked.
But it looks like it is going to be a big surprise when the central bank finally increases interest rates as the BoE’s deputy governor Ben Broadbent just revealed that it will not pre-announce a date for a rise.
We [the MPC] are responding to things that are essentially … unpredictable,” said Broadbent this morning on BBC Radio 5’s “Wake Up To Money” programme.
And that means that it would not just be impossible, it would be foolish to pre-announce some fixed date of interest rate changes.”
The BoE has not hiked rates in over six years and it looks like it will be a while until rates rise again. On Thursday, only one member of the Monetary Policy Committee, a BoE panel which determines the setting of rates, voted to increase interest rates to 0.75%. The remaining eight members of the MPC voted to hold the BoE’s benchmark interest rate at 0.5%.
