(Bloomberg) -- The Bank of England signaled it will keep easing gradually as more officials backed calls for an immediate cut in borrowing costs, prompting traders to boost bets on reductions next year.
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The Monetary Policy Committee voted 6-3 in favor of keeping its benchmark interest rate unchanged at 4.75%, according to minutes from this month’s meeting released on Thursday.
Deputy Governor Dave Ramsden and Alan Taylor — the BOE’s newest rate-setter — switched sides to join Swati Dhingra in advocating a cut. The scale of support for a quarter-point move was not anticipated by economists.
“We think a gradual approach to future interest-rate cuts remains right,” Governor Andrew Bailey said in a statement. “But with heightened uncertainty in the economy we can’t commit to when or by how much we will cut rates in the coming year.”
Investors took the vote split and Bailey’s comments as surprisingly dovish, adding to bets for reductions in 2025. Money-market pricing implied two quarter-point cuts and a strong chance of a third. Gilt yields dropped relative to where they were before the decision, while the pound trimmed earlier gains to trade around $1.26.
The BOE’s vote and its vow to ease gradually “seems to be a tacit pushback against the recent shift in market pricing to just two rate cuts next year,” said Thomas Pugh, an economist at RSM UK.
With Donald Trump poised to re-enter the White House in January, the UK central bank specified geopolitics and trade among the risks it sees, along with the impact of the Labour government’s recent budget. A stagflationary picture emerged in the description of officials, with economic growth now expected to be flat in the fourth quarter.
UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves said that she “fully” backed the bank’s efforts to tame prices, even though it passed up another chance to cut borrowing costs.
“We want to put more money in the pockets of working people, but that is only possible if inflation is stable,” she said in a statement.
The decision places the BOE in a more dovish position compared with the US Federal Reserve, which renewed its focus on inflation in its own announcement on Wednesday.
While UK officials stuck with their guidance for gradual rate cuts and a meeting-by-meeting approach, they did note a growing risk of sticky prices after this week’s shock jump in wage growth and rise in inflation to an eight-month high.
Even so, the shifting vote suggest that such data are yet to deter the MPC from continuing with a cautious once-a-quarter pace to easing, removing constriction on the economy while guarding against inflation threats brewing at home and abroad.