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Bank of England opts to maintain base rate at 0.5%
Posted by Patrick White
Consumers across the UK will once gain encounter low interest rates in the coming month following the outcome of the latest Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting.
The Bank of England's MPC policymakers held their monthly get-together to discuss the nation's base interest rate yesterday (March 10th 2011) and, despite calls from many experts and analysts to increase the figure, decided to maintain the base rate at 0.5 per cent.
This represents the 24th month in succession that the group has voted to keep the rate the same and the reasons behind this are likely to become clearer when the minutes are published later in the month (March 23rd).
Meanwhile, Ian McCafferty, chief economic adviser at the Confederation of British Industry, labelled the decision unsurprising as "MPC members continue to have widely divergent expectations about the outlook for inflation".
However, he added that a rate increase is "likely in the second quarter".
11/03/2011 15:41
News category: Consumer