ING global economic outlook 2023 December 2022 Bank of England The BoE may have hiked by 75bp in November but it made it abundantly clear that this was likely to be a one-off, and that investors were overestimating future tightening. Admittedly, recent data has been slightly hawkish, and the committee is alive to the risk that services/wage inflation may only fall gradually despite the forthcoming recession. But the Chancellor’s Autumn Budget probably did just about enough to assuage the BoE's concerns about fiscal and monetary policy working at cross purposes. While much of the fiscal pain was delayed to future years, the government still scaled back energy support for households next year. We expect 50bp rate hikes in both December and February, marking a peak Bank Rate of 4%. With labour shortages unlikely to disappear next year, and wage growth therefore likely to stay more elevated than in past recessions, we suspect the BoE’s first rate cut may not come until 2024, and after the Federal Reserve. People's Bank of China The PBoC cut the reserve requirement ratio (RRR) by 0.25 percentage points, effective in December, following a cut in April. There were also two 10bp cuts in the 7D reverse repo policy rate and 1Y Medium Lending Facility (MLF) rate back in January and August this year. The loosening of monetary policy has been mild relative to the slow rate of growth, which averaged 3.0% over the first three quarters of 2022. We believe that Covid measures are more likely to ease in 2023. But external demand could be weaker compared to 2022. Overall, growth in the domestic market should outpace the potential contraction of exports. Still, inflation should be absent in China. As such, the PBoC may choose to stay on hold next year as the central bank has hesitated to lower the 7D interest rate to near the 1% level to avoid falling into a liquidity trap. We do not expect the PBoC to cut the RRR or interest rates in 2023. That said, the re-lending programme for specific targets, e.g. SMEs and unfinished home projects, should continue at least in the first half of 2023.