Bank of England governor Mark Carney declines to give details on rate rise in “coming months”

The governor of the Bank of England (BoE) has confirmed the UK will raise interest rates “in the coming months”, but he declined to confirm market expectations of a November hike.

In an interview with CNBC yesterday evening at the meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in Washington DC, Mark Carney said:

We’ve been willing to tolerate inflation being over target. We’re in relatively rare company with having inflation over target.

More people in the UK are working than ever before, so we’re running out of that spare capacity, and that tolerance for having inflation over target in years two and three [of the Brexit process] has diminished.

Read more: Mark Carney: An interest rate rise is coming

Carney stuck to the language previously used at the BoE’s September meeting that interest rates were likely to be raised “in the coming months”, and he added that any rise would be “limited and gradual”.

Financial markets have priced in an 85 per cent chance of a rate move in November, according to Reuters.

The Bank has not raised interest rates since 2007 and last year it cut rates for the first time since 2009 following the Brexit vote, lowering the benchmark cost of borrowing to 0.25 per cent from 0.5 per cent.

Read more: Banks are taking heed of Mark Carney’s warnings on unsecured lending