IoD reaction to Bank of England Inflation Report

Dated: 16 November 2011

Commenting on this morning’s Inflation Report from the Bank of England, Graeme Leach, Chief Economist at the Institute of Directors, said:

“The elephant in the room at today’s inflation report launch was the sheer pace of current events and the likelihood that the report will become dated very quickly. The MPC is faced with an almost impossible task, how to forecast the outlook for growth and inflation when there is an unquantifiable downside risk from the eurozone crisis.

“Their answer to this conundrum is to project a flat line for growth over the next six months, but this is more hope than conviction. We hope they’re right, but fear they’re wrong. The gap between recession and recovery was always going to be narrow in this economic cycle, but uncertainty and postponed business investment and consumer spending means that the situation is now even more precarious.”

ENDS

Contact Points

Edwin Morgan
Media Relations Manager
Institute of Directors, 116 Pall Mall, London SW1Y 5ED
Tel: +44 (0)20 7451 3392
Mob: +44 (0)7814 386 243
Email: edwin.morgan@iod.com
Website: www.iod.com/policy

Notes to editors

  • The IoD (Institute of Directors) was founded in 1903 and obtained a Royal Charter in 1906. The IoD is a non-party political organisation with upwards of 45,000 members in the United Kingdom and overseas. Membership includes directors from right across the business spectrum – from media to manufacturing, e-business to the public and voluntary sectors. Members include CEOs of large corporations as well as entrepreneurial directors of start-up companies.
  • The IoD offers a wide range of business services which include business centre facilities (including ten UK regional centres [three in London, Reading, Birmingham, Cardiff, Manchester, Nottingham, Edinburgh and Belfast] and one each in Paris and Brussels), conferences, networking events, virtual offices and hotdesking, issues-led guides and literature, as well as free access to business information and advisory services and a comprehensive Information Centre. The IoD places great emphasis on director development and has established a certified qualification for directors – Chartered Director – as well as running specific board-level and director-level training and individual career mentoring programmes.
  • In addition, the IoD provides an effective voice to represent the interests of its members to government and key opinion-formers at the highest levels. These include ministers, constituency MPs, Select Committee members and senior civil servants. IoD policies and views are actively promoted to the national, regional and trade media.
  • For further information, visit our website: www.iod.com
  • You can also keep up to date with the latest views from the IoD on twitter.com/The_IoD and at blogs.iod.com