Here comes the Bank of England …

Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of England attends the quarterly Inflation Report press conference at the bank in London, Britain February 2, 2017Reuters/Kirsty Wigglesworth/Pool

LONDON — The Bank of England will deliver its latest monetary policy decisions later on Thursday, and is expected to confirm that its base interest rate, as well as its quantitative easing programme, will remain unchanged.

At 12.00 p.m. GMT (8.00 a.m. ET) Britain’s central bank will almost certainly hold rates at 0.25% and maintain its ceiling for bond buying at £435 billion. The decision is expected to be delivered unanimously by all nine members of the bank’s Monetary Policy Committee.

The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street has been on hold since August 2016, when it cut interest rates from 0.5%, and boosted its QE programme, as a means to protect the UK from the coming economic shock of Brexit.

In January, Governor Mark Carney said in a speech he believes the bank saved up to 250,000 jobs with those measures.

While the actual decisions of the MPC are expected to be fairly straightforward, the minutes of its meeting will be closely watched for any hints about how the BOE intends to deal with the dilemma it currently faces.

Inflation is surging thanks largely to the slump in the pound since the Brexit vote, hitting 1.8% last month. In normal circumstances, rising inflation would likely see the bank raise interest rates to offset this impact.

However, while inflation is on the rise, real wage growth is stagnating and retail sales are beginning to cool, suggesting that the negative impacts of Brexit on the UK’s economy are starting to bite. This means the BOE’s next move could be a further cut.

The bank currently maintains a neutral stance on rates — meaning it has no bias toward cutting or hiking — but any dovish or hawkish hints from the minutes of the MPC meeting will be eagerly anticipated by the markets.

This post will be updated once the bank’s decisions are released.