LONDON (Reuters) -The Bank of England may need to raise interest rates more than once from their current level of 4.5% to bring inflation under control, Monetary Policy Committee member Jonathan Haskel said on Monday.
“My own view is that it’s important we continue to lean against the risks of inflation momentum, and therefore that further increases in interest rates cannot be ruled out,” Haskel wrote in an article for The Scotsman newspaper.
“As difficult as our current circumstances are, embedded inflation would be worse,” he added.
Economists polled by Reuters expect the BoE to raise its main lending rate to 4.75% next week, and financial markets see interest rates rising as high as 5.5% by the end of this year, as the central bank tries to tackle some of the highest inflation of any major economy.
Haskel made similar remarks about the need to push back against inflation in a speech in Washington on May 25, just after official data had shown consumer price inflation fell less than expected in April.
“We are monitoring indicators of inflation momentum and persistence closely,” Haskel said on Monday.
(Reporting by David Milliken; Editing by Sachin Ravikumar and Kylie MacLellan)
