The Bank of England’s new governor Mark Carney has announced that interest rates will not be increased until unemployment drops below 7% insuring they are unlikely to move above their current historic low of 0.5% until at least the end of 2016.
The governor said that even though a “renewed recovery was now underway” in the UK it remained the slowest on record.
He told the BBC that keeping interest rates at the current level until unemployment fell below 7% was expected to boost the economy by “more than half a percentage point of GDP”.
But he warned that this prediction should be taken “with a grain of salt”.
By confirming interest rates will hold at 0.5% he is aiming to create certainty for businesses and individuals.