The Bank of England announce their latest interest rate decision at 12pm in London today (11 May 2015), that's 1100GMT.
In brief ....
- The market expects no change from the current 0.5% base rate
- The rate has been at 0.5% for 73 consecutive months
- The monthly announcement was delayed due to the general election last Thursday
- Most Bank of England attention this week is focused on Wednesday, though, when we get the bank's quarterly inflation report accompanied by the publication of Governor Carney's latest explanatory letter to the chancellor
- Its been 6 weeks since we've had any public utterances from the Bank, they had a self-imposed blackout period leading up to the election
- Economists expect the forecasts growth and inflation in Wednesday's report to be nudged higher, and that Carney will use the opportunity to emphasise the potential for a rate hike could be sooner than the market expects. (The Minutes of the April meeting, for example, showed the members of the policy setting committee generally saw a faster pickup in inflation for early 2016.)