Andrew Bailey, governor of the Bank of England, at the central bank’s headquarters in the City of London, U.K., on Nov. 29, 2024.
Hollie Adams | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey on Wednesday signaled that the U.K. could be on track for four interest rate cuts over the next year, if inflation continues on a downward path.
Asked during a Financial Times video interview whether the central bank would be poised to carry out four quarter-point cuts over the coming year, if its projections of “a little bit of [inflation] persistence” come to fruition, Bailey responded, “Exactly.”
Markets are currently pricing in a hold on interest rates at the Bank of England’s December meeting, according to LSEG data, followed by three 25-basis-point rate cuts. If all four trims materialize, they would bring down the bank’s key interest to around 3.75%, adding to the two BoE reductions this year to date. The institution began cuts over the summer, with Bailey telling reporters in November that the bank would need to take a “gradual” approach to lowering rates.
“Monetary policy will need to remain restrictive for sufficiently long until the risks to inflation returning sustainably to the 2% target over the medium term have dissipated further,” he said at the time.
Surveying the inflation picture on Wednesday, the BoE governor added that consumer prices had come down faster than the central bank had anticipated.
“A year ago, we were saying that inflation today would be around 1% higher than it actually is,” he said during the interview. “And that, I think, is a good test of the [central banking] regime.”
U.K. inflation surprised markets with a rise to a sharply higher-than-expected 2.3% in October, up from the 1.7% of September.
Sterling was trading flat on Wednesday morning, reaching $1.2671 by 11:52 a.m., erasing some of its earlier losses.
Meanwhile, the yield on the U.K.’s 10-year gilts was flat at around 4.273%.