Banks have pushed out their predictions for when the Bank of England will raise interest rates after data last week showed a sharp and unexpected slowdown in Britain’s economic growth.
Expectations the British central bank would raise borrowing costs in May had already weakened after Governor Mark Carney highlighted “mixed” economic data and noted there were also “other meetings” this year in an April 19 interview.
Economists now forecast the BoE will not act until August and may even wait until 2019. Before Friday’s GDP data most economists had expected the central bank to tighten monetary policy next month.
This morning we had the British manufacturing data released and this showed growth slid to a 17-month low in April, continuing with the current trend of poor economic data and further reducing the chances of an interest rate hike by the Bank of England next week.