Poll: UK to keep interest rate at record low to 2017

The Bank of England will leave British interest rates at a record low until next year as stuttering global growth and inflation nowhere near target ties the central bank’s hands, a Reuters poll found.

The rate has sat at 0.5% for more than seven years and the Bank of England — which was once pegged as the first major central bank to tighten policy — will not act until early 2017, the poll of 50 economists taken in the past few days found.

There was only a median 40% chance the central bank will have raised rates by the end of this year, down from the 45% in a March 8 poll.