Top economist warns nation at risk of rising inflation

The Bank of England's chief economist has used his farewell speech to warn that British bankers should devote more attention to the rising cost of living, and has warned that inflation could lead to interest rate rises which would be a nasty shock for consumers.

Andy Haldane, who has been at the Bank for 32 years, made the comments as he left its Monetary Policy Committee, or MPC, and said that the economy was "surfing as high a wave as any in its history".

Last week, the MPC voted to keep interest rates steady at the historic low of 0.1 percent, the rate it has been on since March 2020 when it was reduced to help deal with the initial economic impact of the start of the novel coronavirus pandemic.

Since COVID-19 restrictions began to be lifted, inflation has been going up, and Haldane warned that that by the end of the year, he expected it to be closer to 4 percent than to the Bank's official prediction of 3 percent.

This, he said, "increases the chances of a high inflation narrative becoming the dominant one, a central expectation rather than a risk.

"If this risk were to be realized, everyone would lose－central banks with missed mandates needing to execute an economic handbrake turn, businesses and households facing a higher cost of borrowing and living, and governments facing rising debt-servicing costs."

His remarks come in the aftermath of data from the Office of National Statistics revealing that the British economy's performance at the start of this year was not as good as previously thought.

GDP, which had been estimated to go down by 1.5 percent in the first three months of the year, in fact shrank by 1.6 percent, household spending was also down and the savings ratio, meaning how much income people are withholding from spending, was at 19.9 percent, a rate second only to the 25.9 percent seen at the start of the first lockdown.

These figures in turn come on the back of a 9.8 percent slump in the economy during the pandemic-blighted year.

After Haldane's speech, accountancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers published an inflation forecast which said it expected the rate to peak at between 2.5 percent and 2.8 percent this year, before a gradual decline in 2022.

"In general, inflation is likely to follow an upwards trend as the economy continues to reopen," PwC's Hannah Audino told the Guardian newspaper. "It is expected that the Bank of England will continue to prioritise supporting the recovery with low interest rates, over reducing inflation."