Corporate foreign exchange news
City stunned by Bank's optimism
Thursday, 20 August 2009 09:45:42 GMT

Traders in the City have been stunned by figures from the Bank of England predicting that the UK economy will pull out of recession in the third quarter and grow by 2.2 per cent next year.The outlook, extrapolated from data published last week in the Bank's inflation report, anticipates a 0.2 per cent rise in gross domestic product for the third quarter and further growth of 0.4 per cent in the final three months of the year.However, the Times has noted that the reaction on trading floors has been less positive, with City analysts anticipating annual growth of 0.8 per cent in 2010.Vicky Redwood, UK economist at Capital Economics, told the paper that if the recovery is weaker than the Bank expects - and she insisted that this is likely - the Monetary Policy Committee will be encouraged to extend the quantitative easing programme further in November.The minutes from the August policy meeting, released yesterday, showed that the policy voted to increase the programme to £175 billion to prevent the risk of undershooting inflation targets in the medium term.



