U.K. Jobless Rate Likely To Fall More Rapidly: BoE

(RTTNews) - The Bank of England said the jobless rate is more likely than not to reach the threshold of 7 percent by the third quarter of 2015.

The Monetary Policy Committee attaches only around a two-in-five chance to the unemployment rate having reached the 7 percent threshold by the end of 2014, the BoE said in its quarterly Inflation Report. The corresponding figures for the end of 2015 and 2016 are around three in five and two in three respectively.

Earlier, the bank predicted that the threshold won't be reached until the end of 2016.

The BoE Governor Mark Carney has pledged to keep interest rates at the current 0.50 percent until the unemployment rate falls to 7 percent.

Inflation is projected to fall a little further over the next year or so and the near-term projection is lower than in August, the report showed. According to MPC, the risks around the 2 percent inflation target are broadly balanced in the second and third years of the forecast.