UK inflation slows in Feb

london — British inflation was weaker than expected in February as the impact of the 2016 Brexit vote faded, easing some of the squeeze on households’ spending power but doing little to change bets on a Bank of England rate rise in May.

Official data showed consumer prices rose by an annual 2.7 per cent last month, the weakest increase since July of last year and down from a rise of 3 per cent in January. The figure was slightly below the median forecast of 2.8 per cent in a Reuters poll of economists.

Investors saw the softening of inflation as unlikely to challenge the BoE’s message from last month that interest rates will probably need to rise more quickly than it had previously thought.

British inflation is running at more than double the rate in Germany and France. It is also higher than in the United States, where the Federal Reserve looks set to continue its series of interest rate hikes this week.

“This fallback in inflation therefore provides little reason for the Bank of England to hold back from gradually raising interest rates,” said Andrew Sentance, a former

2.7% rise in British consumer prices last month

BoE rate-setter who is now an economic adviser with accountancy firm PwC. “The UK recovery is now nearly nine years old, and yet our official interest rate is exactly where it was nine years ago.”

Sterling weakened after the data but held on to most of its 1 per cent jump from Monday, when Britain secured a Brexit transition deal from the European Commission, something the BoE is likely to see as adding to the case for a rate hike in May.

Tuesday’s figures also suggested less pressure in the pipeline for consumer prices.

Manufacturers increased the prices they charged by the least since November 2016 as the cost of their raw materials — many of them imported — rose by 3.4 per cent, way down from a peak annual increase of nearly 20 per cent in January last year. —