The Bank of England’s longest series of interest rate increases in three decades is starting to hurt businesses, an indication that policy makers may not have much more to do to rein in inflation, one of the UK’s main industry lobby groups said.
Kitty Ussher, chief economist at the Institute of Directors, said rates may peak “lower than the market is expecting.” Investors are pricing in at least two more quarter-point increases in the base rate, which the BOE boosted to a 15-year high of 5.25% on Thursday.
“You are beginning to see that interest rate rises have had some traction and are affecting confidence,” Ussher said in an interview Friday on Bloomberg Radio. “Those that are exposed to variable debt or in effected sectors are beginning to say that it’s hurting.”
A former Treasury minister, Ussher said the BOE may be “near the point of inflection” with its effort to contain inflation.
“There’s quite a lot of downward pressure on prices coming through now,” she said. “We can see it very clearly in factory gate pricing, in goods inflation, food price inflation – which has been extraordinarily high – is definitely falling back.”
