Hard for Bank of England To Fine-Tune End Of Rate-Tightening: BoE's Mann

• Central banks like the Bank of England will find it hard to communicate the end of their rate-tightening cycle and should not sweat over this at the expense of taking steps to bring down inflation, BoE policymaker Catherine Mann said on Monday.
• UK interest rate expectations jumped after April inflation data fell less than expected, and showed bigger rises in food prices, services and some goods than the BoE had expected. Many economists, by contrast, expect the BoE to stop sooner - or if not, to pause to assess the impact of the rapid series of rate rises.
• Mann was a keen supporter of rate rises last year - often voting for bigger increases than other members of the Monetary Policy Committee - but said she drew some comfort from the fact that household inflation expectations were now falling.
• "Inflation expectations, in fact, are on the downswing even as some of these core and services prints have been more robust than we would have hoped for," Mann said. On the hand, she said these expectations were still too high to be consistent with inflation returning to its 2% target, and last month said Britain appeared to have stickier inflation than the United States or the eurozone.
• Economic activity had also continued to grow modestly and in line with expectations, Mann added. "One per cent growth, no matter how you cut it, is not a great rate of growth. It's not a recession, but it's also not the kind of strong growth that we would hope to see," she said.

(Source: Reuters)