UK inflation hits highest since 2014

LONDON: British consumer prices rose last month at the fastest pace since June 2014 and are set to rise further, propelled by higher global oil prices and the Brexit-fueled fall in the pound, official data showed on Tuesday.
Consumer prices increased by 1.8 percent compared with a year earlier, picking up from 1.6 percent in December, and prices paid by factories jumped by more than 20 percent.
The Bank of England (BoE) expects inflation to approach 2.7 percent by the end of the year while many economists say it will go above 3 percent, putting to the test the BoE’s decision to keep interest rates at a fraction above zero.
At the same time, stronger inflation will put a strain on the spending power of British households who have so far helped the economy withstand the shock of last June’s vote to leave the EU.
Sterling fell below $1.25 and government bond prices rose after January’s inflation reading came in slightly below expectations for a 1.9 percent annual rise in a Reuters poll of economists, held back by a fall in clothing prices.
“We are only seeing the thin end of the wedge in terms of inflation,” said Richard Lim, chief executive of consultancy Retail Economics. He noted that hedging contracts taken out by retailers to protect against sterling’s fall were unwinding.
“We expect inflation will accelerate sharply in the coming months, hitting 3 percent by the end of the year,” he said.
Factories suffered the sharpest annual rise in prices since September 2008 as raw material costs jumped by more than a fifth in January compared with the same month last year.
The major factor was the cost of crude oil, which was more than 88 percent higher than a year earlier — the biggest increase since June 2000 — overwhelmingly driven by a global rebound in oil prices.
In dollar terms, the cost of North Sea oil at the end of January was around 60 percent higher than a year earlier, when it had touched a 12-year low.
The pound’s fall — it is down about 17 percent against the US dollar and 11 percent against the euro since the Brexit vote — is starting to hit consumers, whose spending has helped the British economy to grow since the vote.
Food prices showed the smallest annual decrease since July 2014 as the cost of chocolate and sweets rose by almost 5 percent on the month.
Retail price inflation — tracked by British inflation-linked government bonds and many commercial contracts — also rose to its highest since June 2014, at 2.6 percent.
Excluding oil prices and other volatile components such as food, core consumer price inflation held steady at 1.6 percent, confounding economists’ expectations for a rise to 1.8 percent.