LONDON: Britain’s economy is shuddering to a halt under the weight of the biggest increases in borrowing costs in more than three decades, with concern mounting that rates are headed higher still.
Economists and investors expect the UK central bank to raise its benchmark lending rate by three-quarters of a percentage point to 3% on Nov 3. That’s the highest since 2008 and would mark the biggest single increase in 33 years.
Households already are paying more for new mortgages, and businesses are complaining about the rising cost of credit. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s government is scrambling to cut spending after a surge in market interest rates sent its debt servicing costs soaring.
Together, those forces mean the UK probably has already entered a recession.
And for the first time in decades, the Bank of England (BoE) and Treasury are both slamming on the brakes in the face of economic weakness. They’re focusing on getting inflation under control after it leaped to a 40-year high, delivering a searing squeeze on living standards.
“We’re in for a fairly nasty recession,” said Innes McFee, managing director of Oxford Economics. “The macro response is still set to tighten as we head into a very difficult winter.”
The current pace of monetary tightening ends more than a decade of cheap money, when the BoE pushed rates to near zero to pull the economy out of the global financial crisis and then the pandemic.
It marks the biggest tightening cycle since the period from 1988 to 1990, which brought rates to a peak of 15%.
The BoE’s intention this time is to cool the economy enough that upward pressures on wages and prices dissipate.
Inflation surged after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sent the cost of energy on an upward spiral in Europe, adding to lockdown-induced supply-chain disruption that boosted the cost of goods.
Even so, the impact that higher rates are having on the economy now explains why investors have started to pull back bets for the pace of hikes.
Markets that once priced in a two percentage point hike this week now think the BoE’s decision is between a half-point and three-quarters. BoE deputy governor Ben Broadbent earlier this month warned rates probably won’t rise as much as investors expect.
In the property market, UK mortgage rates have surged close to peaks last seen in the 2008 financial crisis. Liz Truss roiled markets during her brief spell as prime minister with promises to boost borrowing and slash taxes, a package that since has been reversed after Sunak took over.
The cost of a two-year fixed-rate mortgage is now 6.48%, near the highest in 14 years and up from 2.34% in December, according to Moneyfacts Group Plc.
Small businesses are having trouble with high interest rates, which come on top of a surge in inflation and energy costs.
About half of small and medium-sized businesses said the pricing and availability of loans was “poor” in the three months through September, according to a poll by the Federation of Small Businesses.
That’s the lowest in seven years.
For UK banks, higher rates are a mixed blessing. On the one hand, it translates into higher profits for their core lending businesses after years in which rock-bottom rates squeezed margins. Higher borrowing costs also raise the risk of more loans souring, leaving banks on the hook for losses, said Fahed Kunwar, a Redburn analyst. — Bloomberg
