MPC unanimous on base rate decision

Members of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) were unanimous in their decision to hold interest rates at 0.5 per cent earlier in the month.

According to the minutes of the meeting released earlier today (March 17th), all nine voted in favour of keeping the base rate at its record low.

They were also all in agreement in keeping the quantitative easing (QE) programme unchanged at £200 billion.

But certain members of the committee said a weakening of the pound could increase the risk of inflation.

’Some members considered that the upside risks to inflation had increased slightly over the month,’ noted the report.

It added others felt the risk ’had not changed materially’.

Commenting, chief UK economist at Deutsche Bank George Buckley said the results were largely what had been expected.

’We were expecting that it was going to be 9-0 for both rates and QE,’ he remarked.ADNFCR-2318-ID-19673818-ADNFCR