boe_mpr_forecasts: Monetary Policy Report forecast data

In boe: Download Data from the 'Bank of England' Statistical Database

Monetary Policy Report forecast data

Description

Downloads the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Report (MPR) and parses headline projections from the Projections Databank workbook. Returns a long-format data frame where each row is one (publication date, forecast horizon, series) triple.

Usage

boe_mpr_forecasts(
  series = c("cpi_inflation", "gdp_growth", "gdp_level", "unemployment", "bank_rate"),
  month = NULL,
  year = NULL,
  cache = TRUE
)

Arguments

series	Character vector. One or more of: "cpi_inflation", "gdp_growth", "gdp_level", "unemployment", "bank_rate". Defaults to all five.
month	Character. Publication month of the report, e.g. "february" or "may". The report is published roughly quarterly, but the exact month drifts between years (for example, the second 2026 report appeared in April, not May), so any month name is accepted and its existence is verified against the Bank's website. Supply with year. If both are NULL, the most recent compatible release is selected automatically.
year	Integer. MPR year, 2019 or later. Supply with month. If both are NULL, the most recent compatible release is selected automatically.
cache	Logical. Use cached download if available (default TRUE). Older releases never change so the cache never expires; the latest release is refreshed if older than 24 hours.

Details

Coverage runs quarterly from November 2019 (when the report was renamed from Inflation Report) to the latest published release.

Requires the readxl package. The MPR is published as a zip archive containing a Projections Databank workbook plus chart data and slides; this function only reads the projection sheets.

Each row of a projection sheet is one MPR publication; columns are forecast quarters. The same publication therefore contributes multiple rows here, one per forecast horizon.

Value

A boe_tbl data frame with columns:

date

Date. Publication date of the MPR (start of quarter the report covers).

horizon

Character. Forecast horizon label (e.g. "2026 Q1").

horizon_date

Date. Start of the forecast quarter.

series

Character. Series identifier (e.g. "cpi_inflation").

value

Numeric. Forecast value (percent for rates and growth; index for gdp_level).

Release format and automatic fallback

From the April 2026 report the Bank moved to a scenario-based "Scenario Projections Databank" with a transposed layout (following the Bernanke review of forecasting). That format is not parsed by this function yet. When automatic selection encounters such a release it skips it, falls back to the most recent compatible release (the classic "Projections Databank" workbook), and warns. Requesting a scenario-format release explicitly via month/year raises a clear error. Pre-2020 MPRs that predate the single "Projections Databank" workbook may also error.

Source

https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy

See Also

boe_mpc_decisions(), boe_mpc_votes()

Other monetary policy: boe_mpc_decisions(), boe_mpc_votes()

Examples

if (requireNamespace("readxl", quietly = TRUE)) {
  op <- options(boe.cache_dir = tempdir())

  # Latest CPI inflation projections
  cpi <- boe_mpr_forecasts(series = "cpi_inflation")
  head(cpi)

  options(op)
}

boe documentation built on May 30, 2026, 5:06 p.m.