On Thursday 9th Jan, The Bank of England (BoE)’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) has kept the UK base interest rate at the record low of 0.5% for the 58th consecutive month.

Yes, it is getting close to 5 years now when rates were cut to 0.5% in March 2009.

Since then we have seen £375bn of Quantative Easing, cheap money pumped into the economy. Infact it is more than £375bn, as one has the interest (the coupon) on all the HM Government Gilts that are owned by the Bank of England, that is rarely reported.

Now the Bank of England stated it would not even consider raising interest rates until unemployment reached a threshold of 7.0%, which gave certainty to the market back in mid-2013, so the question is whether rates in 2014 will remain at 0.5%.

It all depends on the UK recovery and the reduction in unemployment.