{"id":347563,"date":"2026-03-19T16:13:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-19T16:13:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/347563\/"},"modified":"2026-03-19T16:13:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T16:13:09","slug":"interest-rates-held-at-3-75-as-bank-of-england-warns-iran-war-shock-will-push-up-inflation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/347563\/","title":{"rendered":"Interest rates held at 3.75% as Bank of England warns Iran war ‘shock’ will push up inflation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Unanimous decision to ‘wait and see’ amid fears of inflationary spiralpublished at 12:11 GMT<\/p>\n

12:11 GMT<\/p>\n

\"\"Faisal Islam
Economics editor<\/p>\n

Interest rates are on hold, as expected in recent days. The cut which had been expected before the war with Iran is firmly off amid fears of an inflationary spiral. <\/p>\n

It was a unanimous decision to \u201cwait and see\u201d how long and how severe the conflict will be. The evidence of this morning is at the most concerning end of expectations, with exchanges of fire on key pieces of energy infrastructure and a rapid increase in key prices for oil, gas and fuels.<\/p>\n

Some members are acknowledging that they would have argued for a cut before oil and gas prices spiked.<\/p>\n

There was a discussion about whether a protracted price shock could require rate rises in the future.<\/p>\n

The Bank’s economists have calculated that inflation could now hit 3.5% in the next few months, having previously expected it to hit the 2% target. That was before this morning’s movements which might be more consistent with 4% inflation.<\/p>\n

The next six weeks before the next rate decision at the end of April should help clarify the scale and likely duration of the conflict. In the meantime rates for long term government borrowing and for fixed rate mortgages are already going up.<\/p>\n

Will the next movement be up? It was discussed. It is an active possibility. But it really depends on events in the Gulf. It isn’t just wait and see, it\u2019s wait and see if you can see what on earth is happening with this major conflagration conducted via drones, missiles, and social media diplomacy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Unanimous decision to ‘wait and see’ amid fears of inflationary spiralpublished at 12:11 GMT 12:11 GMT Faisal IslamEconomics…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":102230,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[114,184,85,46],"class_list":["post-347563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-il","tag-israel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=347563"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347563\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/102230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=347563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=347563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=347563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}