London — Major central banks should press ahead with interest rate increases, the Bank for International Settlements says, while recognising that some turbulence in markets will have to be negotiated along the way. The bank, an umbrella body for leading central banks, said on Sunday in one of its most upbeat annual reports for years that global growth could soon be back at long-term average levels after a sharp improvement in sentiment over the past year. Though pockets of risk remained because of high debt levels, low productivity growth and dwindling policy firepower, the bank said policy makers should take advantage of the improving economic outlook and its surprisingly negligible effect on inflation to accelerate the "great unwinding" of quantitative easing programmes and record low interest rates. New technologies and working practices were probably helping to suppress inflation, it said, though normal impulses should kick in if unemployment continued to drop. "Since we are now...
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