The Bank of England is predicted to cut interest rates at least twice in twenty twenty four to help Britain's businesses as the UK economy nears the "orbit of recession" according to economists. The news comes as growth stalls and inflation falls towards a two per cent target. But will the year ahead be better for our pockets?
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00:00 Happy New Year everyone. I hope you had a great Christmas. We can look back on a
00:05 pretty momentous year. We've delivered record funding for the NHS and social
00:10 care. Schools in England are surging up the Global League tables. We're getting
00:14 the economy growing. We've cut inflation in half. We've delivered the biggest
00:18 business tax cut in modern British history and in just the last few weeks
00:22 we've seen an incredible £60bn of investment into the UK.
00:27 Prime Minister Rishi Sunak there giving his New Year's message. He used the
00:31 address to talk about his party's successes over the last 12 months
00:34 including investment in the NHS and social care, schools moving up the
00:38 Global League tables and falling inflation. But it wasn't plain sailing
00:42 across the board. According to the Centre for Retail Research, retailers
00:46 were forced to close down 6,400 stores and cut around 37,000 jobs in 2023. Now
00:53 it seems the Bank of England may step in to help British businesses once again.
00:57 Interest rate rises have been very unpopular, certainly amongst borrowers,
01:02 not amongst savers and that's the aim of it. It's trying to suppress available
01:07 cash so you don't spend more, reduces demands, but it's also trying to
01:11 encourage people to save more. I think it will give people a bit more optimism.
01:16 There was loads of kind of regenerating things, help people working and it then
01:22 creates more jobs and that creates more tax. A poll of economists found that the
01:26 experts believe the BOE will cut interest rates at least twice in 2024.
01:31 Inflation is also predicted to ease with consumer confidence slowly returning.
01:35 Susanna Streeter of Hargreaves Lansdowne said prices will still be rising but at
01:40 a slower pace. Inflation is set to fall further, cutting the cost of living for
01:45 everyone and we're not stopping there. We're going further to grow our economy
01:49 by reducing debt, cutting taxes and rewarding hard work, building secure
01:55 supplies of energy here at home, backing British business and delivering
02:00 world-class education. So what is the overall financial forecast looking like
02:04 for the year ahead? Professor Joshua Barnfield warned the hoped resurgence in
02:09 2024 does not look like it's going to happen until 2025. It's going to be hard
02:14 to get inflation down to 2% when you have wars being fought over countries
02:18 which are suppliers of food to most of the world such as Ukraine. I'm old enough
02:23 to have kind of lived through lots of different cycles, economic cycles. I
02:28 think people forget the cost of the war in Ukraine, the impact of Brexit, more
02:34 importantly the money that was invested through furlough and to try and keep
02:39 people's heads above water. The global inflation is what it says. It's caused by
02:46 lots of lots of macro events and we have to live through it. We should look
02:51 forward full of pride and optimism for what we can do together to build a
02:56 brighter future for everyone. That's what I'm determined to do and I wish you all
03:01 a very happy 2024.