U.K Inflation Rate Hits 20-Month High

U.K consumer prices rose to 20-month high in July.

Consumer prices, which measures inflation rate rose 0.6 percent year-on-year. This was more than 0.5 percent predicted by analysts, according to official data.

This week will give some of the first signs of how the U.K.’s economy is faring post-Brexit vote.

Starting with the inflation data on Tuesday, this will be the week when a raft of economic data indicate how the U.K.’s economy fared in July, the first month after it voted for Brexit. On Wednesday, we will find out unemployment data for July, followed by retail sales on Thursday and public finance data on Friday.

The inflation figures come as a growing number of economists are warning about the danger of complacency by the Bank of England (BOE)’s monetary policy committee (MPC). The MPC currently projects that inflation will take until the end of 2017 to exceed its 2 percent target, despite a dramatic decline in the value of sterling since the referendum.

There has been a 12 percent trade-weighted decline in sterling since the referendum, according to Deutsche Bank calculations, which will have made imported goods more expensive for U.K. consumers, although it will also make U.K. exports cheaper. There is “early evidence that sterling’s Brexit-driven depreciation already is pushing up inflation,” according to Samuel Tombs, chief U.K. economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics.