Savings account customers are still finding it difficult to get a good return on their money, as the base interest rate has been held for yet another month.
The Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) voted to maintain the historic low of 0.5 per cent, while the quantitative easing programme was also held at £200 billion. The base rate has not been changed since March 2009 when it was lowered from one per cent.
Simon Rose from Save our Savers suggested that the decision to maintain the rate is going to have a negative impact on savers and the economy over the long-term. He remarked, “The Aztecs believed human sacrifices would ensure bumper harvests. Perhaps the MPC believes that sacrificing our savings - by keeping interest rates low and failing to control inflation - will magically restore economic growth.
"We call upon the MPC and the government to abandon their short-sighted policies which are undermining the future financial health of the country. A country without savings is a country without a future," Rose declared.
The amount of money put into savings accounts has been in decline for a number of years now. Figures from Save our Savers show that the household savings ratio averaged 8.5 per cent between 1970 and 2000. But this fell to just 4.3 per cent between 2001 and 2010.
