Tightening of the domestic labour market is likely to be a more persistent source of inflation, said the Bank of England (BoE) Deputy Governor Ben Broadbent. During a scheduled speech on the outlook for growth, inflation, and monetary policy this Monday, Broadbent added that the Omicron variant might interrupt the process of countries in the pacific region abandoning "zero-COVID" policies, or at least pursuing them less stringently.

Additional quotes:

• Inflation is likely to rise further over the next few months.
• The chances are that it will comfortably exceed 5% in April.
• Still, good reasons to think that this rapid inflation in tradable goods prices is likely to face.
• In some cases, reversing before a policy decision is taken now could do much.
• The best possible approach is to think at every meeting about the level of interest rates.
• This will maximise our chances of hitting the inflation target a couple of years from now.

Market reaction:

The comments provided a modest lift to the British pound and pushed the GBP/USD pair to a fresh daily high, around the 1.3280 region in the last hour.