Stubborn inflation rate kills off interest rate cut for now

The inflation genie has given warning that it isn’t quite ready to return to its bottle, sharpening the Bank of England’s interest rate dilemma.

- JAMES MOORE

The rate at which prices rose fell only slightly in the year to March. The Office for National Statistics’ consumer prices index declined to 3.2 per cent from 3.4 per cent, higher than the 3.1 per cent expected by economists contributing to the regular Reuters poll.

Inflation now sits at a two-and-half-year low and is far removed from the 41-year high of 11.1 per cent, recorded in October 2022. But the worse-than-expected number still feeds into an increasingly mixed picture facing the rate-setting Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) when it meets early next month.

The UK is in a better place than the US, where inflation jumped to 3.5 per cent from 3.2 per cent last month, but its situation is markedly less favourable than the eurozone’s 2.4 per cent, within sight of the European Central Bank’s 2 per cent target.

True, unemployment is ticking up, but wages still are rising at a 6 per cent clip. This is good news for a workforce battered by an extended cost of living crisis, but it is the sort of number that will raise hairs on the backs of the necks of most MPC members, with the notable exception of dove-in-chief Swati Dhingra, who has consistently argued for an early rate cut.