Media Fast Examination | The Bank of England has promoted the maximum interest rates in 27 years

Recently, Bank of England announced a pessimistic outlook on the economic prospects of the UK. It is predicted that with the impact of the high inflation rate, Britain will fall into a long -term economic recession later this year. The Bank of England has increased its efforts to respond to soaring prices, and its interest rate hike was 0.5 percentage points, a maximum increase since 1995. The interest rate hike is the sixth rate hike since December last year.

Not only the UK, just in July, the European Central Bank raised interest rates, which was the first interest rate hike for more than 10 years. The Federal Reserve raised interest rates of 0.75 percentage points for the second consecutive month.

This time, the Bank of England raised the benchmark interest rate to 1.75%, the highest level since 2008. Because of its prediction, when the amount of household energy bills increased greatly in October, the annualized inflation rate would exceed 13%. This will set the highest inflation rate in 42 years, and it is 6 times that of 2%of the inflation target set by the Bank of England.

The Bank of England said that prices soaring still stems from the global energy market to a large extent. In the past three months, the wholesale price of natural gas this winter has almost doubled. The bank predicts that this will push up the upper limit of the amount of family energy bills in this autumn to reaches £ 3,500 (about 4245 US dollars), which is equivalent to three times a year ago.

The prospects of millions of British families are worrying. After deducting inflation and taxes, it is expected that its revenue will be significantly reduced this year and next, which will be the most serious decline since the 1960s.

The Bank of England predicts that the world's fifth largest economy in the United Kingdom will fall into economic recession in the last quarter of this year, and the decline will continue until 2023.

The total profit of the three major oil companies in the West reached $ 46 billion in the second quarter,

History

In the second quarter of this year, due to the new high of more than 10 years and the profits of oil refining, the total profit of the three major oil companies of the Western Oxson Company, Chevron and Shell Group was as high as 46 billion US dollars, a historical record. The high profits of these companies marked a major turning point in the industry. Since the new crown pneumonia epidemic in 2020, after the global outbreak, the industry's funds have been seriously lost, and dozens of companies have applied for bankruptcy. Today, despite a record of profits, ExxonMobil and Chevron said that around investing in oil production areas, they will adhere to the relatively conservative expenditure plan, choose to return investors and consolidate their own financial situation.

The Ministry of Finance of Ukraine: It will receive 200 million euros from Italy to pay for domestic teachers

On August 5, the Ministry of Finance of Ukraine stated that the country and Italy signed a loan agreement of 200 million euros, which will be used as a national budget for paying teachers' wages. The Ministry of Finance said in a statement that Italy will provide 15 years of funds with zero interest rates to help the Ukrainian government maintain financial stability. For more than 5 months, the Russian -Ukraine conflict has led to a significant decline in budget revenue in the country, but expenditure has continued to increase.

Global food prices fell sharply in July

In July, the food price index of food and agriculture was 140.9 points, a decrease of 8.6%from June, and set the largest month -on -month decline since October 2008, but still rose 13%year -on -year. Food prices reached a record high in March this year. At that time, the index reached 159.3 points, which was mainly affected by the conflict of Russia and Ukraine and the uncertainty of exported grains and chemical fertilizers from the Black Sea. The Grain Organization said that the price of wheat in the world's wheat in July fell as high as 14.5%, partly because Ukraine and Russia lifted an agreement on the blockade of the main port of Ukraine, and Ukraine was about to restore grain exports.

(This article published in "China Economic Weekly" 2022, No. 15)

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The cover of the 15th issue of "China Economic Weekly" in 2022

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