Investing.com – UK inflation was cooler than expected in December, potentially offering the Bank of England opportunity to cut interest rates when it next meets in February.<\/p>\n
Annual consumer price inflation<\/span> fell to 2.5% in December, down from 2.6% in the prior month, but still some way from the Bank of England\u2019s 2.0% medium-term target.<\/p>\n Analysts had expected the CPI to rise 2.6% on an annual basis.<\/p>\n The monthly rate<\/span> rose 0.3%, more than the small 0.1% increase seen in November, but below the 0.4% growth expected.<\/p>\n Core CPI, which excludes volatile energy and food prices, rose 0.3% on a monthly<\/span> basis, meaning the annual rate<\/span> fell to 3.2%, from 3.5% in the prior month.\u00a0<\/p>\n Analysts said the figures will come as something of a relief for the Bank of England, as anything higher would have offered the perfect excuse for speculators to continue selling UK government debt, where yields have soared to 16-year highs amid worries about Britain’s fiscal health under the leadership of Chancellor Rachel Reeves.<\/p>\n This would have also piled pressure on the pound, which is pinned near a 14-month trough, with the UK government likely to be forced to cut spending even more to finance its debt.<\/p>\n “Today\u2019s inflation report will be a welcome relief for the Treasury and Bank of England”, Sanjay Raja Deutsche Bank\u2019s Chief UK Economist said in a note.<\/p>\n “Softer rents inflation, transport and travel services inflation, and hospitality and leisure inflation all contributed to the downside miss we saw today \u2013 as reflected in varying measures of \u2018core services\u2019 inflation. Bottom line, the Bank of England will likely feel emboldened to continue its easing cycle in February. And rate cut expectations further out should ease on the back of today\u2019s data.”<\/p>\n The next meeting of the Bank of England\u2019s Monetary Policy Committee, the group that determines the country\u2019s base rate, is in early February.<\/p>\n \u201cRecent events do give me greater conviction that the Bank of England will not sit on the sidelines,\u201d said analysts at UBS in a note. \u201cHigher borrowing costs, which are flowing into the real economy, are tightening financial conditions. Inflation pressures are present but fading, so a cut in February, with more later this year, remains the base case.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [db:\u6458\u8981]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[28],"class_list":["post-10736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economic-indicators","tag-db"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cryptoopia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cryptoopia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cryptoopia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cryptoopia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cryptoopia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10736"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cryptoopia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10736\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cryptoopia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cryptoopia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cryptoopia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}