Interest rate 'will rise but get under control' says Scarborough finance expert

The Bank of England's expected to raise the base rate of interest

Author: Karen LiuPublished 3rd Aug 2023

The Bank of England is expected to raise the base rate of interest for a 14th consecutive time.

Majority of economists think it will be a jump of 0.25 percent.

Paul Dixon is from Fortus Business Advisors and Accountants in Scarborough. He said: "They're trying to tackle this rising cost and rising inflation and in many ways it's out of their control. Why we've got this in place, a lot of it is down to the jobs market, we've got low unemployment, and also the events in Russia and Ukraine with rising energy costs and less grain coming over which is having an effect on food supplies.

"If somebody is looking to secure a typical two-year fixed mortgage deal, it's around 6.85 percent. If you go back to sort of December 2021, then I think it's on average about £350 a month higher repayment cost than they would have been paying back then. Somebody on an average wage in this area, that could be somewhere around 40 percent of their take home pay.

"Businesses are also affected as they borrow to grow to try and increase revenue, try different product lines and obviously those borrowing costs are going to increase. It might mean they don't take on many staff and the knock-on effect of that is potentially job losses, because they might even choose to cut jobs because the costs are rising so much, which has a knock-on effect on the economy as well.

"There's speculation that inflation will start to drop off further as the year goes along and once they get that under control, interest rates will probably follow and those will come down as well and that will make hopefully make life easier for everybody, because obviously mortgages will then start to be cheaper if people haven't tied into a fixed deal and food and energy prices will also start to drop.

"I think it's a case of people sticking in there. We've been through this before in the past. 2008 was the main last one where we had rising inflation and rising interest rates. Things do eventually come under control, it took a year or two and hopefully we'll get back to that position again and hopefully events in Russia and Ukraine will become clearer as time goes on."

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