On Thursday the pound sterling climbed to two-week highs against the greenback after the Bank of England stood pat on the monetary policy and signaled the recent market rout related to China economic downtrend has not turned the committee from the view a rate increase is approaching.
GBP/USD jumped 0.55% to 1.5408 before consolidating at 1.5398.
The BoE’s monetary policy committee voted eight-to-one to leave interest rates at their current record low of 0.5%.
For the second month, Ian McCafferty was the only one of its Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) members to stand for an increase in rates, voting for a 0.25% hike in the benchmark rate to 0.75% for the second consecutive month.
The MPC voted unanimously to make no changes to the £375 billion asset-purchase program.
Officials also said that the risks from the slowing Chinese economy had increased since August.
In its summary, the committee said: "Developments since then have increased the risks to prospects in China, as well as to other emerging economies."
"Global developments do not as yet appear sufficient to alter
materially the central outlook described in the August Report, but the
greater downside risks to the global environment merit close monitoring
for any impact on domestic economic activity," it added.
The bank slashed its estimate for the UK's economic growth in the third quarter of this year from 0.7% down to 0.6%.
It said that the reason for reducing its UK growth forecast had been the latest run of poor manufacturing and industrial production figures.
However, the minutes also signaled that these developments are not yet serious enough to undermine the recovery in the U.K. economy.
“Domestic momentum is being underpinned by robust real income growth, supportive credit conditions, and elevated business and consumer confidence”, the minutes said.
"The rate of unemployment has fallen by over two percentage points since the middle of 2013, although that decline has levelled off more recently."
Sterling was also higher against the euro, with EUR/GBP down to 0.7246 from 0.7271 earlier.
