The US central bank has held interest rates at a two-decade high for almost a year as it looks to bring inflation down to its long-term two percent target without doing too much damage to either the labor market or the broader economy.
Consumer prices have remained stubbornly above the ECB's two-percent target, although the return to easing inflation will no doubt be welcomed by officials.
Keir Starmer, whose Labour party is tipped to win the vote on Thursday, has ruled out returning Britain to the European single market, customs union, or bringing back free movement of EU nationals.
Chinese policymakers have struggled to reignite growth since the end of strict Covid-19 pandemic health curbs in late 2022. The world's second-largest economy is beset by a debt crisis in the property sector, persistently low consumption and high youth unemployment.
President Javier Milei, who took office in December, stopped all new public works projects as part of his drive to slash spending, and the construction sector was down 19 percent, data showed.
The Consumer Price Index (CPI) -- which excludes volatile fresh food prices -- rose 2.5 percent year-on-year, compared with the 2.2 percent logged in April by the internal affairs ministry.
The BoE was widely forecast to keep its cost of borrowing at 5.25 percent, a 16-year high, following a regular monetary policy meeting.
A self-declared "anarcho-capitalist," Milei has vowed to halt Argentina's economic decline and reduce the budget deficit to zero, and has embarked on a program to slash public spending and bring down inflation, which remains at an annual rate of more than 275 percent.
The zero growth in April followed an expansion of 0.4 percent in March, according to the Office for National Statistics.
The May headline consumer inflation rate is expected to be little changed from a month earlier, according to the median forecast of economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.
After an unprecedented streak of eurozone rate hikes beginning in mid-2022 to tame runaway energy and food costs, inflation has been slowly coming down towards the ECB's two-percent target.
The busy work at the site in Germany is a rare sign of activity in an industry holding out for a fall in interest rates to get back on its feet.
Reserve Bank governor Lesetja Kganyago announced this decision after a meeting of the MPC, noting that it was a unanimous decision. He explained that the inflation had turned out to be higher than predicted earlier in the year, which led to a repricing of rate expectations.
The world's number-two economy has been battered in recent years by a long-running debt crisis in the property market, which accounts for a quarter of gross domestic product, while weak consumer spending and persistent deflation are also dragging on growth.
Markets fell in Asia and Europe on Friday, tracking a sell-off on Wall Street sparked by a string of better-than-expected US data that added to worries the Federal Reserve will hold off on cutting interest rates this year.
The pace of Japanese inflation slowed in April to 2.2 percent as gas bills fell, government data showed Friday, with the figure remaining above the Bank of Japan's two percent target.
Fed policymakers voted to hold rates at a 23-year high after the rate-setting meeting concluded on May 1, as they sought to tackle inflation still stuck firmly above the bank's long-term target of two percent.
Britain's annual inflation rate slowed to a near three-year low in April as energy prices cooled further, official data showed Wednesday, easing a cost-of-living crunch before this year's general election.
The Fed has raised interest rates to a 23-year high and held them there as it looks to bring inflation down to its long-term target of two percent.
Property and construction accounts for more than a quarter of gross domestic product, but the sector has been under unprecedented strain since 2020, when authorities tightened developers' access to credit in a bid to reduce mounting debt.
The IMF said Wednesday that its board had voted to allow member states' IMF-issued international reserve assets to be used by multilateral development banks (MDBs) to acquire financial instruments that would stretch their balance sheets further.
Gross domestic product in the world's number four economy shrank by 0.5 percent against market expectations of a drop of only 0.3 percent.
US President Joe Biden unveiled steep tariff hikes on Chinese green tech this week, hitting imports like electric vehicles, chips and solar cells -- and adding stress to US-China ties.
The European Commission expects inflation to fall to 2.5 percent in 2024, down from a previous forecast of 2.7 percent -- news that will be welcomed by the European Central Bank (ECB).
The official unemployment rate has reached 32.9%, which is 0.8% more compared to the fourth quarter of 2023, as per Stats SA. However, the QLFS results also showed that the number of employed people has also increased from 22,000 to 16.7 million in the first quarter of 2024 compared to the last quarter of 2023.
The Fed has held interest rates at a 23-year high as it looks to bring inflation down to its long-term two percent target.
Sunak -- whose governing Conservatives are trailing the main opposition Labor Party before a general election and suffered heavy losses in English local polls last week -- has made economic growth one of his top priorities.
The BoE is widely expected to maintain borrowing costs at 5.25 percent for a sixth meeting in a row, mirroring a wait-and-see approach by the US Federal Reserve and European Central Bank.
The new note, which will allow people to carry around fewer bills, will be available at banks and ATMs from Tuesday, the South American country's central bank said in a statement.
Von der Leyen said there were "imbalances that remain significant" and "a matter of great concern". She singled out Chinese subsidies for electric cars and steel that were "flooding the European market".
