October 22 (Reuters) – Inflation in Britain could exceed a “very uncomfortable” rate of 5%, said Bank of England’s new chief economist Hu Pill and questioned whether interest rates should be raised to their own in early November. The meeting was “occasional” the Financial Times (FT) reported. Hugh Pill told the newspaper in an interview on Thursday that the Bank of England’s (BOE) monetary policy committee’s decision was “very balanced”.

Financial markets on November 4 predicted a rise of 15 basis points by the BoE, which would make it the first of the world’s largest central banks to raise borrowing costs since the coronavirus pandemic.

The BoE has already said that inflation is likely to exceed 4% and since that forecast, energy prices have risen further. Furthermore, the UK economy is on the verge of regaining its pre-pandemic levels, although the pace of recovery has slowed.

“The bigger picture is, I think there are reasons why we don’t need the emergency policy settings that we saw after the epidemic intensified,” Hu said. bullet on ft.

But the newspaper quoted him as suggesting that rates do not need to be much higher than their pre-pandemic level of 0.75%.

“Given the temporary nature of what we see in terms of inflation in our base scenario, there is no need to take a restrictive (political) stance,” he said.

BoE Governor Andrew Bailey also said on Sunday that the rise in inflation was still likely to be transient, but that the UK central bank should act to contain risks.

Hu Pill told the FT that he has not yet seen an increase in wages due to inflationary concerns. (Reports by William Schomberg and Aakriti Bhalla; French edition Camille Raynaud)