{"id":19320,"date":"2026-04-22T09:00:16","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T09:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/19320\/"},"modified":"2026-04-22T09:00:16","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T09:00:16","slug":"uk-inflation-jumps-but-bank-of-england-hikes-seen-off-the-table","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/19320\/","title":{"rendered":"UK inflation jumps but Bank of England hikes seen off the table"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"UK UK inflation jumps but Bank of England hikes seen off the table Proactive uses images sourced from Shutterstock <\/p>\n

UK inflation rose more than expected in March, driven by higher fuel, food and airfares, though economists say the Bank of England is unlikely to raise interest rates any time soon.<\/p>\n

Consumer price inflation accelerated to 3.3% from 3.0% in February, the Office for National Statistics revealed, as fuel prices increased by the largest amount for over three years.<\/p>\n

Core inflation, which strips out energy and food, eased slightly to 3.1% from 3.2%, while services inflation rose to 4.5% from\u00a04.3%.<\/p>\n

ONS chief economist Grant Fitzner said food and airline ticket prices were also key drivers, with airline prices jumping sharply month-on-month.<\/p>\n

Core goods inflation remained subdued on the back of weaker clothing prices, furniture prices, car prices, and IT goods.<\/p>\n

Economist Sanjay Raja at Deutsche Bank said food prices were a little stronger than forecast, with foods such as yoghurt, chocolate and fish all seeing bigger rises than expected, with airfares also jumping 10% month-on-month.<\/p>\n

“The good news”, he said, was that if stripping out more volatile elements, services inflation remained broadly unchanged, while CPI is still expected to take a big step down in April due to the lower Ofgem price cap this year.<\/p>\n

“The bad news? The drop won\u2019t be as big as we previously anticipated.\u00a0Just two months ago, we thought headline CPI could make its way to 2% y\/y in spring. Instead, given the energy shock, we expect price momentum to stick around 3% y\/y\u00a0for much of the year.”<\/p>\n

ING economist James Smith said:\u00a0“The Bank of England is still flying blind, with the conflict unresolved. But the limited amount of survey data available so far suggests little cause for alarm on inflation.<\/p>\n

“And against a fragile jobs market, we don\u2019t expect a rate hike next week, nor this year.”<\/p>\n

Rob Wood at Pantheon Macroeconomics viewed the\u00a0inflation outlook as “little changed”, as he expects airfares to unwind their unusually strong early-Easter rise, but clothes prices to rebound from large discounting.<\/p>\n

“Inflation will likely average 3.2% for the rest of the year,” he predicted, dropping to 2.9% in April, hitting a low point of 2.8% in June and a high of 3.5% in September, “if energy futures curves prove accurate”.<\/p>\n

CPI at 3.2% is “not high enough to scare the MPC into hiking rates imminently”, Wood stated, but if the Iran war is resolved quickly\u00a0he does not expect the monetary policy committee to rush to cut rates either.<\/p>\n

“Inflation was a little below the ‘close to 3.5%’ reading that the MPC forecast in the minutes of its March meeting, core inflation was weaker than consensus.<\/p>\n

“But underlying services inflation posted the strongest three-month-on-three-month gain in nearly a year which, combined with unemployment falling yesterday, will limit the number of MPC rate cuts that are possible if oil prices fall back, and tip the balance towards hikes if oil prices stay high.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"UK inflation jumps but Bank of England hikes seen off the table Proactive uses images sourced from Shutterstock…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19321,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1256,8931,8930,1477,1326,8932,1312,5,8929,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-19320","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uk","8":"tag-bank-of-england","9":"tag-consumer-price-inflation","10":"tag-core-inflation","11":"tag-deutsche-bank","12":"tag-food-prices","13":"tag-inflation-outlook","14":"tag-office-for-national-statistics","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-uk-inflation","17":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116447544809444432","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19320\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}