The month-on-month increase was the highest for the time of year since the National Statistics Office began in 1988. Wide price increases, ranging from vehicle fuel to food and furniture, were behind the increase. Households have been facing the biggest squeeze on the cost of living since archives began in the 1950s, according to Britain’s budget forecasts, and rising inflation is still bad news for the government. Johnson and Sunak were fined by police on Tuesday for attending a June 2020 Johnson’s birthday party at his office on Downing Street during a period of restrictions for COVID-19, prompting political opponents to ask them to resign. . Sunak – previously considered the leading candidate to succeed Johnson – saw his popularity plummet after a budget announcement in March that the public felt had done little to ease the cost of living pressures. “I know this is a worrying time for many families and that is why we are taking action to lighten the burden by providing support of around 22 22 billion ($ 29 billion) this fiscal year,” Sunak said. Jack Leslie, a senior economist at the Resolution Foundation, said Sunak would be under pressure to do more. “The enormous scale of this inflationary pressure caused by inflation makes even more remarkable the little support the Chancellor gave in his spring statement – a decision that should definitely be reconsidered before the autumn budget,” Leslie said. . British inflation rose unprecedentedly last year, following a similar pattern to most other advanced economies, as energy prices rose and pandemic supply chain difficulties remained. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24 pushed energy prices even higher, and last month the British Office for Budget Responsibility predicted that inflation would peak at a 40-year high of 8.7% in the last quarter of 2022.
The percentages are increasing
Financial markets are confident that the Bank of England will raise interest rates to 1% from 0.75% on May 5 before bringing it to 2% -2.25% by the end of 2022, although many economists expect it to be less aggressive. The BoE predicts that economic growth will slow sharply this year as pressures on the cost of living increase. Samuel Tombs, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics in the UK, forecasts that inflation will reach 8.8% in April after the launch of household utility bills, but then falls below the BoE’s 2% target in the second half of next year. Wednesday’s data showed that the basic CPI, which does not include food, energy, alcohol and tobacco prices, rose to 5.7% in March from 5.2% in February. Retail price inflation — an older measure that the ONS says is inaccurate but widely used in commercial contracts and to set interest rate bonds on inflation-linked bonds — rose to 9.0%, the highest since 1991. . There were signs of further inflationary pressure as manufacturers raised their prices by 11.9% in the 12 months to March, the biggest jump since September 2008. The cost of manufacturers’ raw materials jumped by 19.2%, the largest increase in records began in 1997.
