Feb. 3 (UPI) —<\/span> Britain’s central bank narrowly voted to raise interest rates on Thursday — the first time it’s done so on two consecutive meetings in nearly 20 years. The European Union’s central bank, meanwhile, decided to leave rates alone.<\/p>\n The Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee voted 5-4 to increase rates by 25 basis points, to 0.5%. The panel did the same at the bank’s last meeting in December. The last time it ordered rate hikes in back-to-back sessions was 2004.\n<\/p>\n<\/article>\n The Bank of England has hiked interest rates to 0.5% and is taking other measures to battle inflation.<\/p>\n The bank’s policy committee was unanimous in wanting to increase rates. The four members who voted against the quarter-point hike wanted a larger increase.\n<\/p>\n The Bank of England noted that inflation in Britain climbed from 5.1% in November to 5.4% in December, and said it expects prices to increase to almost 6% in February and March before peaking at around 7.25% in April.<\/p>\n The bank said it was partly motivated to make the increase to meet its 2% inflation target and sustain economic growth.<\/p>\n Also Thursday, the European Central Bank decided to leave rates unchanged near zero — although prices in the eurozone climbed by more than 5% in January.\n<\/p>\n In a statement, the bank said it expects inflation in Europe to decrease throughout 2022.<\/p>\n In its assessment, the Bank of England noted that global and British economic activity returned to their pre-COVID-19 levels at the end of last year — and that it expects Britain’s economy to recover this month and next from the impact of the Omicron COVID-19 variant.<\/p>\n The Bank of England also noted that it expects unemployment in Britain to rise to 5% due to higher energy prices and rising costs for other goods.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Bank of England, pictured, also noted in its report Thursday that\u00a0it expects unemployment in Britain to rise to at least 5% due to higher energy prices and rising costs for other goods. File Photo by Andy Rain\/EPA-EFE Feb. 3 (UPI) — Britain’s central bank narrowly voted to raise interest rates on Thursday — the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":974940,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-974939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/974939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=974939"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/974939\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=974939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=974939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=974939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"British](\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/British-central-bank-hikes-interest-rates-for-2nd-straight-session-ECB-takes-no-action.jpg\" "\\"British")
\n<\/div>\nThe Bank of England, pictured, also noted in its report Thursday that\u00a0it expects unemployment in Britain to rise to at least 5% due to higher energy prices and rising costs for other goods. File Photo by Andy Rain\/EPA-EFE<\/p>\n