Top economic forecaster Martin Weale to join Bank’s rate-setting committee
LEADING economist Martin Weale has been appointed as an external member of the?Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) by chancellor George Osborne.
The director of the National Institute for Economic and Social Research (Niesr) will join the MPC in time for the August rate-setting meeting and the forecast round leading up to it, the Treasury said yesterday.
Weale, who has a doctoral degree from Cambridge and a CBE for his services to economics in 1999, replaces Kate Barker who left the MPC at the end of May.
He had been the director of the Niesr since 1995 and his involvement in the think-tank’s forecasting processes and policy comment will cease immediately. Each month, the Niesr publishes a closely-watched forecast of GDP?growth and has been slightly more pessimistic than the consensus.
Analysts said his appointment was unlikely to cause a significant shift in the Bank’s approach to monetary policy. He had previously noted that policy should be left on hold because the upside risks to inflation from a persistently high headline rate were balanced by downside risks to growth from weakness in the Eurozone.
Barclays Capital’s Simon Hayes said this would put him broadly in the middle of the MPC pack and suggests that his move to the committee is unlikely to provoke a shift in the policy debate in the near term. IHS Global Insight’s Howard Archer agreed, saying Weale did not appear to be in any hurry to raise rates.